The carriage's inner walls split apart completely.
Dark red tumors forced the sheet metal apart from within, sending steel bolts flying one after another like rotten teeth.
Thick blood vessels crushed the wooden seat frames, and webs of purple-black capillaries crawled across the window glass.
Demon blood consumed the entire train's structure in mere moments.
The steel behemoth, weighing hundreds of tons, became an enormous, writhing chamber of flesh assembled from a metal skeleton and living tissue.
Enmu's laughter seeped from every crack in the carriage walls.
It no longer came from any single direction, but echoed from everywhere at once.
"You ridiculous Demon Slayers."
A dense row of fangs split through the ceiling, while bloodshot eyeballs bulged from the floor, one after another.
Every eyeball swiveled at once, slick with mucus, and locked onto every living person in the carriage.
"Two hundred humans are still breathing, asleep right at your feet. Your mercy is your greatest weakness."
On the roof.
Yaha crouched on the sheet metal, listening to the grating echoes below, the corners of his mouth turning down.
Three thick, dark red tendrils burst through the seams beneath his feet, carrying the rotten stench of demon blood as they coiled toward his ankles.
Yaha did not even change his posture. Both hands remained in his pockets.
He merely traced a shallow arc across the sheet metal with the toe of his combat boot, grinding it down carelessly.
A thread of pitch-black cursed energy sank into the metal, forming a dark score barely visible to the naked eye.
The instant the tendrils touched that score, they stopped.
Dense black grains of char appeared across their cross sections, as though a red-hot iron plate had been pressed hard against them.
Their cells began dying rapidly from the tips, the necrosis spreading along the tissue fibers and back into the carriage.
Within half a second, all three tendrils became a heap of black ash, swept clean away by the night wind.
Five more emerged from the other side.
They touched the score and met the same fate.
Ash, scattered on the wind, without even a scrap left behind.
Yaha yawned in boredom and switched hands to prop up his chin.
To him, the lethal roof beneath his feet was no different from his own balcony.
Inside the carriages, things were another matter.
In the first carriage, Kyojuro Rengoku's body had already strangled a third Nightmare Tentacle while he remained unconscious.
Before the scraps of flesh in his palm could drip away, a fourth tentacle slipped out beneath a seat back.
Its tip stabbed straight toward his temple.
Rengoku's eyelids snapped open.
His golden eyes shone piercingly in the dim carriage.
An instant before the tentacle struck, his right hand shot out. His fingers clamped onto its fleshy wall like iron pincers, and his wrist twisted sharply.
A muffled bang rang out.
He crushed and twisted the tentacle apart at its midpoint. The severed limb twitched twice on the floor, then went still.
Rengoku stood.
He glanced over the writhing flesh filling the carriage and the passengers who remained asleep with their eyes rolled back.
Smack!
He slapped his own cheek hard, the crisp sound echoing through the chamber of flesh.
"Hmm! To think I fell asleep as a Hashira. I could dig a hole and crawl into it."
His Nichirin Blade slid free of its sheath.
The crimson blade radiated searing heat amid the dim glow of the flesh.
Flame Breathing completed its first cycle within his lungs.
Rengoku launched himself from his seat, smashing straight through the connecting door between the first and second carriages.
His shoulder broke the metal door into two spinning pieces of scrap, which buried themselves deep in the fleshy walls on either side.
"Flame Breathing, Second Form: Rising Flame Sky."
A ring of flaming sword energy surged outward with Rengoku at its center.
Every tentacle packed into the second carriage burned through in an instant.
White smoke and a scorched stench rose from the cuts, while the blast sent countless black scraps of flesh flying throughout the carriage.
Rengoku did not stop.
He kicked open the third carriage's door and swept his crimson Nichirin Blade across it, severing dozens more tentacles at their bases.
The fourth, then the fifth.
He hurtled back and forth through all five carriages like a blazing cannonball. He cleared each carriage as he reached it, then doubled back to check that the passengers were safe.
He moved so quickly that Tanjiro saw only a fiery red afterimage bouncing back and forth.
"So fast." Tanjiro gripped his Nichirin Blade and swallowed hard.
Inosuke showed little reaction.
He merely wiped his twin blades against his thighs, his eyes beneath the boar mask fixed on the front of the train.
Rengoku returned to the third carriage, stepping over charred scraps of flesh, his breathing as steady as ever.
His gaze swept quickly over Tanjiro, Inosuke, and Zenitsu, who was producing low rumbles of thunder in the corner.
Finally, he glanced at the Wooden Box on Tanjiro's back.
"Tanjiro, Inosuke." Rengoku lowered his voice, his golden eyes fiercely sharp.
"This demon's main body is at the front. Its neck vertebrae are hidden beneath the cab floor. I could smell the course of its core blood vessels. You two, go around outside, find its neck vertebrae, and cut through them."
"Zenitsu and Nezuko will stay back here and help me protect the passengers."
Rengoku raised his Nichirin Blade, pointing its tip forward, his voice steady as a mountain.
"Go. Trust your blades."
Tanjiro nodded firmly, then climbed through the window with Inosuke. They gripped the outer wall and rapidly made their way toward the front.
On the roof.
Yaha withdrew his gaze from below.
The translucent System Panel automatically appeared across his vision.
[Watching the weak struggle between life and death aligns with the nature of absolute evil. Roleplay level +1%. Current roleplay level: 53.5%.] [Warning: If the host actively intervenes to protect specific targets, the system will determine that "the instinct to protect your own has been exposed," reducing roleplay level by 3%-5%.]
Yaha stared at the flashing red text, pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and gave a derisive snort.
"Stupid rules getting in my way."
Of course he could press down with one hand and reduce Enmu, along with all the train's flesh, to powder.
The fine control of Cursed Technique: Dismantle had already been proven in Blue Stone Town. Not one of those two hundred civilians would lose so much as a hair.
But that was not how the system judged it.
The system only recognized the logic behind his actions. Saving people meant protecting his own, which meant losing points, which would slow the unlocking of his advanced abilities.
And the Upper Rank Three rapidly approaching in the distance was the prey that truly demanded his full strength tonight.
Yaha stuffed his hand back into his pocket, leaned against the exhaust pipe on the roof, and continued watching coldly.
Outside the front of the train.
Tanjiro and Inosuke climbed along the carriages on their hands and feet, battling the wind at forty kilometers per hour.
Countless tendrils emerged from seams in the sheet metal, lashing at them like whips.
"Water Breathing, Third Form: Flowing Dance."
Tanjiro's blade spun in a flowing arc, cutting through three tentacles blocking their path in succession.
He pushed off a window frame, flipped over a thick fleshy arm sweeping across his path, and delivered a second slash in midair.
On his right, Inosuke crossed his blades defensively, their serrated edges shredding the thin tendrils wrapped around his ankles.
"Move, move, move! The one up front is mine!"
Working together, they hacked their way toward the front of the train.
The gaps between their strikes grew shorter, their breathing gradually falling into sync.
As Tanjiro dodged left, Inosuke's right blade was already covering the opening. The fight forced them into a level of perfect coordination they had never achieved before.
Bang!
At last, they kicked open the cab's iron door and charged inside.
Enmu sensed the threat.
The cab floor exploded, and dozens of thick blood vessels surged up from beneath it.
They twisted together in midair, forming a many-eyed tentacle monster nearly two meters tall.
Dozens of eyeballs of various sizes covered its surface, each pupil bearing a crooked character meaning "dream."
All the eyeballs swiveled at once, locking onto Tanjiro at the front.
A wave of forced hypnosis erupted instantly.
The scene before Tanjiro's eyes collapsed.
His body in reality froze where he stood.
Yet his right hand rose little by little as though controlled by invisible strings, bringing the cold edge of his Nichirin Blade toward his own carotid artery.
In the dream, Tanjiro stood outside his home.
His younger siblings laughed around the stove. Nezuko approached with hot soup, calling him her big brother.
He bit through the tip of his tongue.
The intense taste of blood tore the illusion apart.
In the dream, he drew his sword and slashed across his own neck. The agony of cutting his throat forcibly hurled him back into reality.
But his hand in reality was still drawing the blade across his neck against his will.
His consciousness was dragged back in.
He cut his throat again.
A third time. A fourth.
Tanjiro's mind was being torn rapidly between dreams and reality.
Every time he cut his throat, he tested the limits of his sanity. The boundary between illusion and reality grew increasingly blurred.
He was almost unable to tell which side was real.
Inosuke was faring little better.
The tentacle monster extended more than a dozen tendrils, binding his feet like iron bands and dragging him straight toward the gap above the tracks beneath the carriage.
The wheels thundered over the rails right beside his ears, and the fierce wind churned up by their hubs lashed painfully at his face.
He drove both blades into the floor and held fast, their serrated edges plowing two brilliant trails of sparks through the iron.
The bones in his wrists scraped with a teeth-grating sound.
In the five carriages behind them, Enmu launched a second all-out assault.
Over a hundred tentacles stabbed toward the sleeping passengers at once.
Rengoku and Zenitsu were pinned completely to their defensive positions, unable to break away and support the pair up front.
Inside the cab, Tanjiro's raised blade had already cut through his skin.
Beads of blood slid down along his collarbone.
Inosuke's right foot was pulled completely through the floor, leaving half his leg dangling outside the carriage.
Less than two fists' width remained between it and the rapidly spinning wheel.
On the roof.
Yaha finally shifted his gaze back from the distant horizon.
He looked down beneath his feet.
A glaring red warning flashed across his vision.
[Intent to intervene detected. Risk of roleplay level reduction is extremely high!]
Yaha pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, a savage dark red gleam rising in his eyes.
With a thought, he crushed the irritating warning panel.
His right hand slowly slipped from his pocket. He brought his long index and middle fingers together and casually bent them.
"You're as slow as turtles."
Yaha's voice carried lofty contempt.
"I don't have the patience to sit here and wait for you idiots to die."
Before you continue