The days grew hotter as the swordsmen fought their battles against demons.
Haruto removed the cloth pouch hanging from Cang Kong's leg and took out the securely wrapped Potion bottle. After a moment's thought, he tucked it into the storage cabinet on the wall.
Then he took a glossy black Browning pistol from a drawer and wiped the dust off its surface with a velvet cloth. The new era's deadly weapon gleamed with a chilling light.
Haruto had obtained the guns through a Kakushi he knew well: a Browning and a more powerful Double-Barreled Musket. He had originally gotten them for Genya, who had been fascinated by such things since childhood and had aimed a brass slingshot at him during their very first meeting.
But Genya disliked the Browning for being too small and less powerful than the Double-Barreled Musket. During his experiments, he discovered that after consuming demon flesh and blood, he could imbue the bullets he fired with a Blood Demon Art. That made him even more attached to the Double-Barreled Musket, while the more expensive Browning gradually gathered dust in the drawer.
It was only when Haruto last returned to the Swordsmith Village to visit its chief that Tetsujikawara Tecchin introduced him to a master smith from outside the village. After ordering a batch of bullets that could be filled with wisteria poison from that smith, Haruto finally found the perfect use for this gun.
Holding a Nichirin Blade in one hand and the Browning in the other, Haruto felt as though he stood between two wheel tracks of history, caught in a subtle overlap of time and space.
After a brief hesitation, he wrapped the gun in the velvet cloth and tucked it into the bottom of his back basket along with three rows of bullets.