The Hand Demon? It Didn't Even Deserve to Be Called Weak!

Sabito was woken by birdsong.

Dawn had yet to fully break. Gray light seeped through the paper windows, and when he rolled over and sat up, Giyu was still snoring steadily next door.

He shouldered his wooden sword and headed out, running up the old trail behind the mountain.

This was his unwavering morning routine: three round trips from their lodgings to the giant boulder at the summit, with five hundred practice swings mixed in.

On his second lap, he turned onto a side trail he rarely took.

Then he stopped.

Square blocks of wood lay scattered haphazardly among the fallen leaves at his feet.

Sabito crouched, picked one up, and turned it over twice in front of his eyes.

The cut surfaces were as smooth as a carpenter's work marked with an ink line before cutting.

Every face met at a perfect right angle. Not a single splinter protruded from the severed grain.

He looked up ahead.

The entire patch of woods was gone.

More precisely, every tree within a fifteen-meter radius had been turned into palm-sized blocks like this one.

They lay neatly piled on the ground, as though someone had fed an entire forest through a cutting machine.

Yet three perfectly intact trees stood alone in the middle.

All the trees around them had been diced into a grid, but these three remained untouched, without even the tiniest scratch on their bark.

Sabito's breathing involuntarily grew heavier.

He dropped the block in his hand, walked a few steps forward, and crouched again to feel the cut surfaces of the broken wood.

They were exactly like the cuts on the giant boulder behind the mountain, exactly like the fragment of stone he had carried in his pocket for two days.

Smooth as a mirror.

Sabito stood and surveyed his surroundings.

Three trees, a fifteen-meter radius, absolute destruction in a grid pattern, yet precisely preserved pockets of life within it.

He stared fixedly at the three intact trees, a thin sheen of sweat forming on the palm gripping his wooden sword.

"Master..."

As he murmured that word, a feverish flame suddenly blazed in Sabito's eyes.

Master Urokodaki's ultimate trial!

It had to be!

He had long known that Master Urokodaki had been the Water Hashira in his youth and had taken in many disciples after retiring.

Before descending the mountain, every group of disciples faced an exceptionally harsh test.

This patch of woods, cut into a grid, was clearly a training ground their master had created with some unknown sword technique so advanced it made him shudder.

The three intact trees represented the three of them.

The shattered blocks around them represented the enemy's indiscriminate attacks.

The meaning could not have been clearer-control their strength with precision and protect themselves amid an impossibly dense onslaught!

This was the ultimate secret their master wanted them to grasp!

Sabito felt his blood boil.

He drew his wooden sword, rushed up to the nearest reasonably intact stump, took a deep breath, and brought his blade down.

Water Breathing, First Form.

The stump split with a crack, scattering chips everywhere.

"Too rough."

Sabito looked at the jagged break and shook his head hard.

Compared with the smooth blocks on the ground, the mark left by his strike looked as though a wild beast had chewed it.

He stepped back twice and raised his sword again.

A second strike, a third, a fourth.

With every slash, he tried to compress his strength and breathing to their utmost limits, attempting to produce that mirror-smooth cut.

He couldn't.

He was nowhere close.

Yet the more Sabito swung, the more excited he became.

That was more like it. The goal their master set should be a despairingly distant peak like this.

If they could achieve it without any effort, how could it be called the ultimate trial?

Wood chips danced in the morning light. Sabito's swordplay grew fiercer, every blow delivered with everything he had.

Atop a tall cedar roughly forty meters away from him.

Yaha crouched on the thickest horizontal branch, chin propped on one hand, watching the scene below.

He failed to stop the corners of his mouth from twitching twice.

This guy was actually serious.

Sabito genuinely believed this was a training assignment Urokodaki had set. Judging by his reckless enthusiasm, he could probably keep hacking away until noon without stopping for breath.

Yaha shifted his gaze from Sabito to the patch of woods he had wrecked the night before.

It really was his fault. He hadn't cleaned up properly.

He had originally planned to kick all the broken wood into a ravine and bury it after he finished practicing.

But testing his precision had taken longer than expected. With dawn approaching, he had hurried back to catch up on sleep, given the place a cursory cleanup, and slipped away.

He had never expected that morning-training fanatic Sabito to veer into this wasteland.

Whatever. Let him misunderstand.

It was less trouble than having someone point a finger in his face and demand, "What exactly did you do?"

Yaha shifted position, leaning his back against the trunk and letting his legs dangle loosely on either side of the branch.

He casually plucked a leaf and twirled it idly between his fingertips.

The notification the system had displayed last night still echoed in his mind.

[Absolute Contempt for the Weak.]

He had turned that phrase over and over all night, until it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He had spent ten years in this fucked-up world since transmigrating here, ten years keeping his head down, and two years playing that lunatic.

Everything had been for survival, and to keep the people around him alive too.

Tsutako, Giyu, Sabito, Makomo.

From beginning to end, that had been his only reason for desperately seeking strength.

Now the system was telling him that if he wanted greater power, he had to learn to trample the weak.

Yaha raised his hand. Thin strands of morning light slipped between his fingers and fell across his pale palm.

These hands had already taken one demon's life.

On that snowy night two years ago, he had sliced the bastard choking Tsutako into more than a dozen pieces, then crushed its head beneath his foot.

Had he felt contempt then?

Yes.

At the time, only one thought had filled his mind: Why did a piece of trash that didn't even deserve to touch his sister get to keep living and breathing?

And the system had indeed awarded him one percentage point of roleplay level for that look in his eyes.

So the real issue wasn't whom he despised.

It was... how he defined "the weak."

Yaha loosened his fingers and let the leaf drift down.

The Hand Demon on Mount Fujikasane had eaten more than a dozen of Urokodaki's disciples. It had lurked on that mountain for decades, imagining itself the king of the entire mountain.

In the original story's predetermined fate, it had crushed Sabito's mask and torn Makomo's body apart.

What did something like that amount to before him?

Did it count as weak?

Yes.

Weaker than a rat in the sewers.

Yaha opened one eye and glanced through the gaps in the leaves at Sabito, who was still frantically chopping stumps below.

That hotheaded idiot would enter Mount Fujikasane in half a month.

Without Yaha there, Sabito would die beneath the Hand Demon's flailing arms.

His mask would shatter, his head would be flaunted as a trophy, and he would ultimately become another boast spilling from that demon's mouth.

Then Urokodaki would wait at the foot of the mountain for the rest of his life, waiting for a disciple who would never return.

Yaha's gaze darkened little by little, a faint, unsettling dark red glimmering deep in his pupils.

He conjured the Hand Demon's image in his mind.

Dozens of thick arms, an enormous, hideous body, and a mouth full of deranged ramblings about Urokodaki's disciples.

Before the King of Curses, a thing like that was nothing but something that deserved to die.

Not weak.

Trash.

Yaha felt that even directing an emotion like "contempt" at it would sully his eyes.

But if that was the attitude the system wanted, he would give it exactly that.

On Mount Fujikasane, he would slice that Hand Demon apart bit by bit, like a filthy rag.

With all of Sukuna's arrogance, all his indifference, all his disdain from on high.

Let the system watch to its heart's content.

He wanted those two percentage points. He wanted Reverse Cursed Technique.

He wanted to become a true, undying monster that not even an Upper Rank could kill.

Then he would use that monster's body to protect the people he wanted to protect.

Yaha closed his eyes, the faintest curve tugging at his lips.

Using Sukuna's ultimate malice to protect his companions was ironic no matter how he looked at it.

But as long as it worked, that was enough.

Below the tree, Sabito had already chopped through his third stump and was running back with his sword on his shoulder, drenched in sweat.

As he passed beneath the cedar where Yaha was hiding, he tilted his head up and shouted.

"Tomioka Ye Yu! Stop sleeping! Master's given us a new assignment! Get up and practice!"

There was no response from the tree.

Assuming he wasn't there, Sabito muttered, "Lazy bum," and ran off without looking back.

Yaha rolled over in the treetop, settled into a comfortable position, and went back to catching up on sleep.

At noon, Urokodaki called the three of them into the courtyard.

The old man held three masks.

White with red markings and shaped like foxes, their mouths curled upward in smiles that looked both eerie and faintly comical.

"These are Warding Masks."

Urokodaki's voice remained calm, as though he were discussing something utterly ordinary.

"The date of the final selection has been set. Half a month from now."

"The three of you will enter Mount Fujikasane and survive there for seven days and seven nights."

Sabito accepted his mask with both hands, his eyes as bright as burning torches.

Giyu also reached out, securely drawing his mask against his chest, his fingers tightening slightly around it.

Yaha was the last to step forward.

With one hand in his pocket, he casually picked up the mask with the other, turned it over, and examined the grinning fox face.

"Doesn't this thing block your vision?" he asked with a yawn.

"You'll find out when the time comes," Urokodaki said.

Yaha casually tucked the mask behind his waist, turned, and walked back.

As he took his third step, an extremely subtle sensation of being watched suddenly prickled across his back.

It was as though a pair of deeply experienced eyes were trying to pierce his flesh and see the dangerous things hidden in his bones.

Yaha didn't look back.

He knew Urokodaki was watching him.

The old man had been watching him for two years.

Two whole years, without asking anything or saying a word.

But Yaha knew perfectly well that Urokodaki had probably long since classified him as an inhuman monster who required constant surveillance.

Whatever.

As long as the old man didn't turn on him and lock him up before the final selection, nothing else mattered.

Yaha raised his head and looked at the gloomy sky above Mount Sagiri.

Half a month from now. Mount Fujikasane.

He touched the fox mask at his waist, a cold, malicious smile curling across his lips.

That Hand Demon had better have a tough neck.