Akaza stood amid the ruined garden, thick with the smell of blood and bitter cold.
Facing the woman with an enormous Long Sword resting on her shoulder, her presence like a savage god descended to earth, he felt every drop of blood in his body surge with excitement!
Strong!
So fucking strong!
The Fighting Spirit pouring off this woman was like tangible fire-searing, wild, immense, ancient and explosive enough to crush everything!
Its intensity actually surpassed his own, and he was a demon who had lived for centuries!
That unimaginable pressure made Akaza, Upper Rank Three, experience a rare shudder of something called... fear!
But even stronger was his passion! An endless longing to throw everything he had into a battle against the absolute strongest!
Yesterday's battle with Kyojuro Rengoku had been brutal, and the man's resolve to burn through his own life was admirable.
But... it still hadn't been enough! In the end, the sunlight had forced their fight to stop!
And now, before him stood an even more mysterious peerless fighter, with an even greater arsenal of tricks!
If he could fight her, he would gladly sacrifice even his most beloved big brother, Upper Rank Two!
His warrior's soul roared wildly! His thirst for battle threatened to erupt like a volcano! His fists clenched unconsciously, his knuckles cracking explosively!
Fighting feels so damn good!!!
Just then-
"Akaza! Fucking run-!" A hysterical mental roar struck him, filled with utter terror and an absolute command.
It was Lord Muzan!
The Demon King who had just suffered humiliation at this woman's hands unlike anything in the past thousand years, even being forced to blow himself apart to barely escape with a scrap of his body!
"She thinks I'm Akaza! Hide the writing in your eyes! Right now! Immediately!!"
Muzan's thoughts lashed Akaza's nerves like a whip.
"If you fucking dare fight her and let her recognize you or confirm who I am... I'll twist your head off when you get back and give it to Gyokko for a chamber pot!!"
Akaza's blazing desire for battle was extinguished as though a bucket of water made from ten-thousand-year-old ice had been dumped over his head!
His golden eyes, blazing just a moment earlier, instantly froze and dimmed! His martial aura, which had climbed to its peak, rapidly deflated like a punctured balloon.
Lord Muzan's command, backed by threats to his survival and identity, was absolute! An iron law engraved into the very source of demon blood!
The immense gulf between that desperate longing and forced submission nearly twisted his demon core. An indescribable frustration and... feeling lodged in his chest, so unbearable that he wanted to cough up blood.
Akaza shook his head sharply!
With that shake, the golden lettering for "Upper Rank" and "Three" burning in his eyes instantly dimmed and vanished.
In its place appeared a pair of utterly ordinary dark brown eyes.
"So who the fuck are you, then? Do you know Akaza got away???"
Under the Sapphire Star's scrutiny, Akaza's brain began working faster than ever before.
Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing??...
Oh, right!
"I'm... under Muzan... a reserve member of the Twelve Kizuki..." His voice was a little dry as he tried to put on an expression that mingled fawning with feigned pride.
"...Doma! Yes, I'm that disgusting, shameless bastard of a demon who loves eating women for dessert-Doma!!"
Akaza marveled at his own genius.
The Sapphire Star: ???
Even her sword tip unconsciously dropped a few inches.
Huh???
Would a normal demon call himself disgusting and all that??
What the hell was this?! Had a roof tile knocked a dent in this guy's brain during the fallout from the battle?
Or... were all demons mentally unstable?
Looking at the demon calling himself "Doma," whose eyes were both nervous and inexplicably aggrieved,
the Sapphire Star felt, for the first time before an enemy, a profound sense of... intellectual helplessness.
"And now, my Ultimate Blood Demon Art: Destruction... Scattered Lotus Blossoms! Take this, Demon Slayer!!!"
Akaza suddenly roared, his voice shaking the surroundings! At the same time, he stamped his foot!
Boom-!
The ground beneath him cracked! An extraordinarily elaborate ice-blue spell circle, radiating cold and covered in intricate lotus patterns, instantly spread beneath his feet!
It shimmered with brilliant light, cold spilling out in every direction! A crystalline lotus pattern took clear shape on the ground, pulsing with powerful, violent energy!
Everything about that spectacle and that spell circle announced that an earth-shattering showdown was about to begin!
The Sapphire Star's pupils contracted sharply. Feeling the powerful energy rippling beneath her feet and the lethal threat within the spell circle, even she dared not let her guard down!
"Come on!" the Sapphire Star shouted, instantly pushing the remaining medicinal power and Fighting Spirit in her body to their peak!
She stepped forward into a lunge, lowered her center of gravity, and held the blade horizontally at her side, taking a perfect Sheathe stance that balanced offense and defense, poised to strike!
Her focus sharpened to its utmost. Like a hawk, she locked onto the core of the spell circle beneath Akaza's feet, every muscle taut as she awaited that earth-shattering blow!
The atmosphere froze solid! The breath of death wove through the air! Time seemed to stretch-
At that lightning-fast instant, as both sides stood poised to unleash their power!
The magnificent lotus spell circle beneath Akaza's feet suddenly flared! Then-
His body, bristling with menace as though he were about to launch a devastating strike, used the immense force of his ground-shattering stomp and the rising dust as cover-and pushed off hard with both feet!
Whoosh-!
He did not charge forward to attack!
Instead... he twisted at the waist, wrenching his body backward a full hundred and eighty degrees at an impossibly tricky angle that defied inertia!
Then, as though rocket thrusters had been strapped to his ass, he exploded into the fastest sprint of his life!
Boom!
He became a scarlet afterimage streaked with ice-blue light, concealed by the dust thrown skyward by the force of his launch.
With a shriek like the sound barrier breaking, he raced for his life without looking back-in the exact opposite direction from the Sapphire Star!
The spell circle beneath his feet even left a perfect afterimage where he had stood before slowly fading away...
The Sapphire Star: ...???????
Her Sheathe stance froze completely.
The Fighting Spirit and killing intent she had just concentrated still hung on her blade, unreleased. Her brain hadn't even finished processing the sight before her.
HOLY FUCK-!!!
Half a second later, the Sapphire Star finally reacted!
"You motherfucking bastard, you tricked me again?!"
The Sapphire Star was so furious her head practically steamed.
Do all you fucking Twelve Kizuki love pulling this fancy shit?
Every member of the Twelve Kizuki she had encountered so far was an expert at running away.
"Scoutflies! Chase him!"
Today, she was going to drag that slippery little eel out, chop him to pieces, and feed him to Nezuko!
Though Tanjiro seemed to have said that Nezuko didn't eat demons.
Bzzzz-!
Infected by their master's fury, the swarm of Scoutflies flashed a blinding red and surged in the direction Akaza had vanished, like hornets from a disturbed nest.
The Sapphire Star moved so fast she left an afterimage behind her, smashing through every obstacle in her path!
She chased! After pursuing him for roughly a kilometer or two...
Bzzz... bzzz...
The tracking light of the Scoutflies suddenly became wildly unstable! It flickered violently like a failing signal. They could clearly still sense a lingering trace of his presence, yet it was as though they had hit an invisible wall!
Pff, pff, pff...
Under the Sapphire Star's disbelieving gaze, the blood-red trail marking her target faded bit by bit, as though rubbed out with an eraser, growing fainter... until it vanished entirely into the air.
A few remaining Scoutflies circled aimlessly, giving off a weak glow that soon went out as well.
The Scoutflies' tracking had been completely cut off!
"He... he got away?! Did he crawl into a rat hole?!" The Sapphire Star slammed to a halt, staring at the vanished Scoutfly trail.
Sword drawn, she looked around in bewilderment. There was nothing but quiet countryside and desolate paths, a faint demon stench, and a trace of... fishiness?
The Sapphire Star stood frozen, still gripping the Fatalis blade, brimming with power she had nowhere to unleash.
"FUCK-!!!" An earth-shaking roar rang across the countryside, startling countless night birds into flight.
The Sapphire Star vented her rage by slashing at an innocent boulder beside her!
Boom!
The boulder instantly crumbled to dust!
She stared at the pulverized boulder, then at the destruction she had caused, and an immense wave of frustration and self-loathing surged into her heart.
Not one demon! I didn't kill a single one!
The bastard who injured the Flame Hashira got away. He blew himself to bits, and I still didn't finish him off!
That meddling "Doma" slipped away like an eel too! And he fucking did it by using his so-called "Ultimate Blood Demon Art" as a smoke screen to trick me!
And look at the wreckage behind me! A perfectly good garden, pitted and scarred like it had been hit by a meteor shower!
This whole trip, I failed to track them, failed to get revenge, let my targets escape, and turned someone's home into a demolition site.
A complete loss on every front!
The Sapphire Star felt exhausted in body and mind, filled with helplessness.
For the first time, this hunter from another world felt weary. She drove the Fatalis Demolisher into the ground and plopped down beside it.
"I'm such a useless piece of shit..."
Looking at the colossal mess before her, one that would take a professional construction crew to fix, she felt even guiltier at the thought of making those dutiful Kakushi clean up after her again.
"So... I'm really not cut out to lead the Fifth Fleet... Compared with Lone Bird and Blaze, I've still got a long way to go..."
Before you continue