Not even worth killing!

The white light faded quietly.

No shock wave tore across the earth, no rubble hurtled in every direction on a blast of air. The white mass that had swallowed everything simply receded like the tide, drawing back from the center to reveal what had really happened at the point of impact.

Akaza's Annihilation Type punch had stopped dead.

More precisely, his fist still held its striking pose. All five fingers were clenched tight, blue demonic markings etched deep across every knuckle. But the Fighting Spirit coating his fist was gone.

That armor of deep-blue energy, tempered over centuries, had evaporated the instant it touched the dark-red arrowhead. Like winter breath on glass wiped away by a hand, it vanished without a trace.

The flames clung to the bones of his fist.

Akaza's right index finger changed color first. His nail blackened at the root, the darkness spreading outward ring by ring. This was not the black of scorching, but carbonization-the dead gray left behind after his cells were stripped of their right to exist at the level of the soul.

Finger joints. Metacarpals. Wrist.

Dark-red fire crawled upward along the grain of his bones. It moved slowly enough that every inch of flesh peeling away could almost be tracked with the naked eye. Wherever the flames licked, muscle fibers curled like dried petals drained of moisture, carbonized, and crumbled into powder that scattered at the slightest wind.

Akaza cried out.

The sound squeezed out from the deepest part of his chest, his throat rasping like metal scraping against metal. It was not the battle howl of a demon that Rengoku knew so well. It was something more primal.

Pain.

Akaza had not tasted that word in centuries. An Upper Rank's body pushed its pain threshold toward infinity; losing an arm or a leg amounted to little more than a muscle twitch. But these flames were not burning flesh.

Half his forearm was already gone. Carbonized particles flaked off the exposed surface at his elbow, each one carrying the sharp agony of his soul being torn apart, pouring straight along his nerves into his demon core.

Akaza reacted with incredible speed.

His left hand swung. Its blade-like edge chopped toward the base of his right upper arm. He meant to sever the whole arm at the shoulder, sacrificing the limb to stop the flames from spreading.

The edge of his hand cut into his shoulder joint. Bone broke. His right arm fell away.

The fire did not stop.

Dark-red light surged backward from the severed surface onto the edge of his left palm. Thick black smoke poured between the five fingers of the hand he had used to save himself. Carbonization began at his fingertips, spreading faster than it had through his right arm.

Akaza's pupils dilated completely.

He shook it. He shook his burning left arm desperately. The cracking of his palm bones mingled with his screams as great strips of flesh peeled from his forearm. But the flames spread far faster than he could regenerate a severed limb-and he was no longer regenerating at all.

Yaha's gaze grew a shade colder.

He withdrew the bow-shaped cursed energy loosely held in his left hand and curled his fingers slightly.

The dark-red flames suddenly swelled.

There was no explosion. Only a dull whump as the air compressed at tremendous speed. Akaza's body flew backward through the air. His trajectory was low, almost as though he were being shoved along the ground. His back scraped across the gravel beside the railway tracks, his body plowing through dirt and stones and throwing up two waist-high waves of dust.

Fifty meters.

One hundred meters.

Two hundred meters.

A charred trench stretched from Yaha's feet to the far end of his vision. The soil on either side had baked into dark-red shards of hard pottery, still radiating residual heat.

When Akaza finally stopped, the end of the trench collapsed. Half his body sank into the rubble, motionless.

His right arm and right shoulder had vanished completely. They had not been severed, but erased from this world. The exposed surface of his shoulder had burned into a solid mass of pitch-black charcoal. There was no blood, no writhing new flesh, no sign of regeneration. Carbonized particles still fell from its edges as black smoke hissed upward.

His left arm was also gone from the forearm down. The same charred surface. The same deathly stillness.

He lay there with only a torso and two ruined stumps. His blue demonic markings dimmed like ink diluted with water. His golden pupils lost focus for several seconds, then slowly focused again.

Inside Yaha's mind, the mechanical voice sounded right on cue.

Ding.

[The host has crushed the target's faith in martial arts head-on through absolute arrogance and power of the same attribute. Assessment complete.]

[Open (Flame Arrow) officially unlocked.]

[Current roleplay level has surged to 63%.]

One corner of Yaha's mouth tugged upward.

He walked forward across the scorched earth. The soles of his combat boots crunched against the fire-hardened soil. The lingering dark-red flames on the ground automatically parted as he passed, as though making way for something.

Tanjiro stood in the distance, rooted to the spot.

He had not blinked once throughout the entire scene. From the arrow's release, to Akaza being hurled two hundred meters away, to Yaha now walking through the firelight across the scorched earth, less than ten seconds had passed.

Rengoku's hand rested on his sword hilt. His knuckles were white. His body had already been healed, his breathing steady and his limbs strong. Yet the hand gripping his sword was trembling.

Inosuke crouched on the ground without a sound. Beneath his boar mask, his lips were pressed into a tight line.

Yaha reached the end of the trench.

Akaza lay crookedly in the rubble. The exposed surfaces of both stumps still hissed with smoke. His chest heaved violently, the pulsing of his demon core visible beneath his skin, beating again and again.

Yaha looked down at him.

He nudged the charred surface of Akaza's right shoulder with the toe of his boot. A layer of carbonized debris fell away, revealing deeper charcoal beneath. Akaza's body jerked, and a distorted howl squeezed from his throat.

"So this is the supreme territory you spent centuries chasing."

Yaha drew his foot back and slipped both hands into his pockets. His scarlet eyes swept down over the mangled body. There was no anger in his voice, no pleasure-only pure disgust spilling from his very bones.

"Those pathetic play-fighting fists of yours aren't worthy of my fire."

Akaza's pupils trembled.

Just then, the ring finger of Yaha's right hand spasmed violently inside his pocket.

Agony erupted from his fingertip. Capillaries beneath the skin on the back of his hand ruptured en masse. Dark-red blood rapidly spread beneath his skin, staining his entire hand the bruised purple of corroded iron. The cursed energy of Reverse Cursed Technique arrived. Repairs began with the largest blood vessels, welding them back together one by one. But it was half a beat too slow. Only half a second, yet that brief delay made Yaha's brow twitch.

The output of Open had forcibly breached another layer of his human body's overload limit.

Yaha's expression did not change. Without a sound, he pushed his right hand, slowly breaking apart from within, deeper into his pocket. His knuckles pressed against the fabric as he forced down the stabbing pain seeping through his bones, layer by layer, through sheer willpower.

The cursed markings remained on his face. In the depths of his scarlet eyes, the same brutally savage coldness lingered.

No one noticed.

Akaza lay amid the rubble. His consciousness flickered in and out through the agony.

Centuries. Over those centuries, he had honed his fists to perfection. The alignment of every muscle fiber, the load-bearing angle of every bone, the weaknesses of every Breathing Style-his body remembered them all.

His fists were everything to him.

But that arrow had burned everything he had to ash.

It had not even given him a chance to struggle.

Annihilation Type was his ultimate trump card. All his demon blood, all his faith, all those centuries. The moment he threw that punch, he believed it could shake any powerful opponent.

Then that mass of dark-red light had gently touched it.

As lightly as flicking dust off a coat.

Something shattered in Akaza's golden eyes.

It was not his demon core. That was still beating, though its rhythm had already fallen into chaos. What broke lay deeper inside. It was the conviction forged into the bones of a human named Hakuji centuries ago, when he clenched his fists and swore to protect someone.

A blurry image flashed deep within his mind.

Briefly. Like a meteor streaking across his retina.

A woman's face. Soft features, a gentle expression. She seemed to be smiling, yet she also seemed to be crying.

Akaza's pupils contracted violently.

Who was that?

He tried to seize the image, but it vanished too quickly. Like a reflection on water shattered by a pebble, it left only emptiness once the ripples faded.

He struggled to lift his head. The remaining stump of his left arm scraped a smear of black ash across the ground. His golden eyes met Yaha's scarlet ones.

Yaha watched him.

He watched this demon who had lost both arms, who lay crawling in the rubble, whose eyes still held some emotion he could not understand.

Yaha tilted his head.

"Remember something?"

Akaza's body went rigid.

Yaha crouched. His right hand stayed in his pocket while the index finger of his left hooked beneath Akaza's chin, forcing those golden eyes to look straight into his own.

"What a shame."

Yaha's voice was soft, every word grinding against Akaza's demon core.

"You're not even worth killing."