On Mount Sagiri, the place Murata had been longing for, only a few children remained, their bottoms sticking up as they wiped down the dozens of Mechanical Puppets with towels.
Where had Haruto gone?
The scrolling comments had jolted him awake, and he had something more important to do.
Blood lay spattered all over the Dilapidated Building. Several Demon Slayer Corps swordsmen lay sprawled on the ground, looking as though they had been dead for some time.
The tearing, twisting agony in his body finally subsided a little. Kaigaku dropped to his knees again and vomited up a mass of sticky sludge before he finally felt as though he had been reborn.
He kicked his legs and scooted farther inside, looking fearfully outside the building, only to discover that it was night.
The puddle of vomit inside contained food he had eaten as a human, the flesh and blood of comrades he had swallowed in his dazed state after becoming a demon, and even his Kasugai Crow, which he had snatched up, bitten through the neck, and swallowed while out of his mind.
Kaigaku swallowed, and the terror instilled by that superior demon gradually faded.
Several days earlier, he and his comrades had encountered a demon so powerful that he had not even dared to swing his blade.
After the demon effortlessly killed the swordsmen accompanying him, the shadow etched into his bones immediately rose in Kaigaku's heart.
Years ago, he had experienced a scene almost identical to this one.
A demon's terrifying presence, and his own helplessness before it.
Back then, he had chosen to strike a bargain with the demon.
Now, he had chosen to strike a bargain with a demon again.
He had dropped his Nichirin Blade, the very blade the old man had praised so