Yoriichi Type Zero's six wooden swords slashed down in a crisscross pattern, accompanied by the hum of precision gears grinding together.
Tanjiro rolled left, but one blow still caught his right shoulder. With a dull thud, he was knocked two meters away and landed facedown on the grass, spitting out blood-tinged saliva.
He climbed to his feet. His knees shook, and the tip of his Nichirin Blade tapped the ground twice before he steadied it.
A short figure wearing a Hyottoko Mask crouched nearby, arms folded across his chest, his tone as sour as if he had swallowed three pounds of vinegar.
"That's your forty-seventh knockdown. There's a three-tenths-of-a-second opening when you transition from Water Breathing to Hinokami Kagura. This doll could exploit a flaw like that three hundred years ago. What are you planning to make up for it with? Sincerity?"
Kotetsu hadn't finished his scathing remarks.
His voice caught.
Someone pushed aside the bushes at the edge of the woods. A black haori, dark gray cursed markings extending from the side of his neck to below his collarbone, both hands in his pockets, his steps as casual as a stroll through his own backyard.
Yaha stepped out from behind the trees.
The air in the clearing changed that very instant. It wasn't pressure, but something more fundamental-like an apex predator entering a rabbit warren, every creature's spine receiving the same signal at once.
The gears in Yoriichi Type Zero's joints clicked, and the rhythm of its six-armed assault faltered ever so slightly.
Tanjiro turned around.
He saw that face. Dead-fish eyes, a half-open black haori, and the cursed markings on the side of his neck gleaming darkly in the sunlight. The man who had descended from the sky aboard the Mugen Train and stopped Upper Rank Three's Annihilation