Inside the Infinity Castle.
"Waaaah..."
Muzan, in his female form, sat slumped on the floor formed by an upside-down roof, making a token show of wiping his eyes (though there were no tears). With an exaggerated mix of lingering terror and overwhelming relief, he shouted into the air:
"Nakime! My goddess! My savior! My light... no, my moon! How am I supposed to live without you? Waaaah!!"
He practically wanted to set up a shrine praying for Nakime's long life right then and there.
"When it comes to reliability, you're absolutely the No. 1 demon, Nakime! All the other Upper Ranks put together aren't worth a single string on your biwa!! Screw Daki and Akaza! They're all useless!!!"
His wild emotional swings made him blurt out anything that came to mind. He even began considering whether he should kick out one of the Upper Ranks and give Nakime their place.
Kokushibo probably wasn't an option...
Trembling, he climbed to his feet and tried to calm his seven hearts.
"Ahem!"
Muzan cleared his throat, struggling to recover his dignity as the Demon King, and looked up into the empty space above the Infinity Castle.
"Nakime, that walking disaster... she didn't follow us in, did she? There aren't... any other presences in the Infinity Castle, right?"
Nakime's voice echoed through the silent castle. "My lord, apart from you, I have detected no other presence within the Infinity Castle thus far."
"YES-YES-YES!!!"
Muzan couldn't help throwing his arms up and cheering. All his terror, humiliation, and misery vanished, leaving only the boundless arrogance of someone who had cheated death. His bones crackled as he returned to his adult male form.
"Hahahaha! That dumbass Sapphire Star! A walking disaster? Is that all she's got?!" Hands on his hips, he laughed with reckless delight.
"I slipped away right under your nose! Slipped away, you hear me?! And now you can't even find me! Mad yet? Stumped, aren't you? Can't catch me, can you? Nyah, nyah, nyah!"
"And she calls herself a hunter! She's no different from those Demon Slayer Corps fools, dancing in the palm of my hand! Hehehehehe... huh? My head's itchy..."
Muzan scratched the back of his head, wondering whether he had botched his transformation. Why did his head itch so much?
Was he growing a brain?
His five brains were already more than enough. He was incredibly smart.
Come to think of it, why did that prickling sensation feel so much like killing intent?
"...Behind me?" Still scratching his head, Muzan turned around slowly, frame by frame.
Less than five meters behind him, at the end of a floating corridor that had been empty a moment ago, a tall, blurred, distorted silhouette was slowly taking solid form.
The tip of an incomparably sharp sword came straight toward the space between his brows.
Yet not a trace of her presence leaked out...
Sapphire Star!
Not only had she followed him inside, she had stood there watching him celebrate, prance around, and mock her like a ridiculous clown...
"WAAAAAAAH!!!"
"NA-KI-ME, YOU SCREWUP!!!"
"HEEEELP!!!"
Scared out of his wits, Muzan scrambled backward on all fours, rolling and crawling in a frantic retreat driven by pure instinct.
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
Several enormous walls rose out of nowhere in front of Muzan.
A bottomless chasm dozens of feet wide instantly opened beneath Sapphire Star!
Several floating corridors twisted wildly, stretching the distance between them to an astonishing extent in an attempt to shake off that deadly walking disaster!
"My lord! Forgive me! I truly couldn't detect her presence! That strange cloak of hers..." A rare, almost imperceptible tremor entered Nakime's normally emotionless voice.
Could Sapphire Star's bizarre outfit actually fool even the Infinity Castle's spatial perception?
"Shut up! Useless! You can go disembowel yourself too!!!" Muzan roared hysterically as he tumbled and scrambled along the wildly twisting, moving corridors.
He bitterly regretted everything. Why had he sent out Kokushibo, Akaza, and even Doma?!
Now the Infinity Castle was as empty as a sieve, without a single body to take a blade for him.
The tip of that monster's sword behind him seemed about to press against his back!
"Nakime!!" he bellowed. "Let that thing out! Right now! Immediately!!"
"But, my lord..." Nakime's voice held a hint of hesitation. "It... it's still in an extremely unstable state of fusion. It's unfinished..."
"I don't care!!" Muzan cut her off with a roar. "If it breaks, it breaks! At worst, we can take apart Gyokko, Hantengu, and those other useless bastards for materials and piece it back together! Hurry!! Let it out!!!"
Nakime said nothing more.
Twang-! A biwa note even more piercing than before suddenly rang out!
Rumble! Rumble!
Several more enormous walls crashed toward Sapphire Star with an ear-splitting scrape.
"Keep running, Akaza! You almost fooled me!" Sapphire Star spun and slashed.
Crack! Boom-!
The thick walls were shredded into clouds of dust, but the successive spatial barriers finally slowed her steps by a fraction.
"You've got the wrong person! The wrong person! I'm just a helpless woman, not Akaza! Waaaah!" Muzan shouted as he ran.
Meanwhile...
At the center of the Infinity Castle, an enormous cubic cage bound in countless thick chains let out a teeth-grating screech of tearing metal.
An indescribable figure slowly "flowed" out of the shadows of the opening cage.
It had no fixed form, as though countless masses of translucent, constantly writhing and shifting gel had been forcibly kneaded together. At times, it condensed into a vague humanoid silhouette; at others, it dispersed into a colorful nightmare mist that covered a vast area.
Within its chaotic core, countless demon faces could dimly be seen, twisted in agony and screaming silently as they rose, sank, struggled, fused, and separated!
"Heh... hehehe..." An eerie whisper composed of countless overlapping voices echoed through the Infinity Castle.
"Unleash... your imagination... Lord... Muzan..."
Nameless Hundred Faces!
This was the ultimate weapon Muzan had created by exhausting his resources, ordering Akaza to capture every demon he could find with a mental Blood Demon Art, then using his own blood as the Demon King to forcibly fuse them together.
At the sight of Nameless Hundred Faces, Muzan's face twisted with feverish delight and a hint of pain at the cost. He pointed at Sapphire Star, still pursuing relentlessly behind him, and bellowed:
"Hundred Faces! Hold her off! I'll give you even greater rewards!"
Hundred Faces' countless distorted faces turned toward the murderously intent Sapphire Star at once!
"Heh... obsession... fear..." The overlapping murmurs sounded like a curse.
Bzzzz-!
In the warped space ahead of Sapphire Star, countless pale arms, twisted limbs, and an enormous demon face covered in stitched scars and seething with malice coalesced out of thin air.
It was the Hand Demon she had destroyed long ago.
"ZA WARUDO! Time, stop-!!!" The newly born Hand Demon unleashed a deafening roar.
Sapphire Star's golden pupils abruptly contracted, and her charging figure faltered for the briefest instant!
Holy shit, the Hand Demon?! Did I get up too fast??
His presence, his appearance... exactly the same! An illusion? Or some kind of resurrection?!
The Hand Demon wasn't about to wait out Sapphire Star's hesitation. He roared and attacked.
"Wryyyyyy-!!! I'm back from hell!"
"MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA-!!! Die! Ka-Q... die! Sapphire Star!!"
With that crazed roar, the Hand Demon slammed all his enormous arms into Sapphire Star.
BAM-!!!
Sapphire Star was caught off guard, partly by her shock and partly because this Hand Demon was far stronger than the one on Mount Fujikasane.
The sheer force sent her flying backward.
Now!
Twang-!
Another piercing biwa note resounded through the Infinity Castle.
Directly in the path of Sapphire Star's backward flight, a spatial exit to the outside world instantly opened.
Sapphire Star and the Hand Demon passed unhindered through the newly formed spatial doorway.
Bam! Boom-!
Outside, deep in a relatively quiet back alley of the Entertainment District.
With a tremendous crash and a cloud of dust, Sapphire Star's burly figure smashed through a low wall, sending rubble flying.
As for the Hand Demon, the moment he left the Infinity Castle, his enormous body rapidly turned transparent and began to dissolve...
"Nani! Impossible! Impossible! Spiral staircase... rhinoceros beetle... Pucci! Jotaro!!!"
"Ko no Hand Demon... no! Ko no Dio da!! Aaaaaah!"
The Hand Demon wailed in agony, uttering a string of nonsensical words before vanishing like a burst bubble.
Sapphire Star: ????
Looking rather bedraggled, she climbed out of the rubble and dusted herself off, her face full of bewilderment.
Inside the Infinity Castle.
Watching the spatial doorway snap shut, Muzan's nerves, stretched to their absolute limit, finally snapped.
His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the upside-down corridor.
"It... it worked?" Even his voice trembled.
"Yes, Master. The target has left the Infinity Castle," Nakime confirmed in her calm, emotionless voice.
"Ha... hahaha... hahahahaha!" Muzan began with a low chuckle that swelled into uncontrollable, wild laughter, echoing through the empty Infinity Castle.
"Hundred Faces! Well done! Well done!!" He looked at the slowly shrinking mass and, for the first time, found the monster rather pleasing to the eye.
Though it had cost him the exposure of his trump card, and he had nearly died of fright... at least he had finally thrown that walking disaster out!
"Nakime! Right now! Immediately! Reinforce every spatial barrier! Hide the Infinity Castle in the deepest cracks between spaces! Without my orders, not even a fly gets in! If anything else goes wrong, your head will become Gyokko's chamber pot!" Muzan leaped up and screamed, still reeling from the fright.
"Yes." Nakime's biwa sounded again.
Muzan watched the Infinity Castle gradually vanish into a deeper layer of space.
That walking disaster outside... for the foreseeable future, he would rather die than encounter her again!
The Blue Spider Lily? Just let Daki and the others take their time finding it... safety first! Safety first!
"Come to think of it, where did you throw Sapphire Star?"
"My lord, I sent her back to the Entertainment District."
"WHAT THE FUCK! NAKIME, ARE YOU INSANE?!!!!"
Before you continue