"Hinokami Kagura, Flash Dance!"
Tanjiro gripped his Nichirin Blade, wreathed in roaring flames, and severed thread after thread as he closed in on Rui.
Perhaps Tanjiro was a little younger now than he had been when he faced Rui in the original story, but after training under Ye Chen and several Hashira, and with the Charcoal he carried, he was certainly no weaker.
"...You bastard!" Rui looked increasingly flustered as Tanjiro pressed closer. Even so, he had no intention of taking back the power he had lent the other demons, and continued attacking Tanjiro with his threads.
But his attacks clearly no longer posed much of a threat to Tanjiro. Just as he was about to make his next move, the situation changed again!
"...What?" Tanjiro's pupils constricted. An intense sense of danger swept over him, forcing him to stop his pursuit and retreat rapidly.
The next instant, a demon's hand grabbed at the spot where he had just stood. At the same time, Tanjiro seemed to sense something and quickly turned around.
"Nezuko!!"
Standing before Tanjiro was someone he had met once before-Upper Rank Two, Doma!
Doma had already frozen Nezuko's limbs, leaving her unable to move.
"So this is the girl Lord Muzan told us to keep an eye on? She doesn't look like anything special." Doma looked Nezuko up and down, then smiled at Tanjiro. "I feel like it'd be better if I just ate her~"
"Don't touch Nezuko!!" Tanjiro shouted and charged straight at Doma.
But just as he was about to reach Doma, a tentacle suddenly emerged from the ground ahead of him, then opened a giant eye!
"...That's!?"
Tanjiro faltered for a moment. An instant later, he had already fallen under its spell.
Tanjiro knew this was the same kind of eye he had