Wind Hashira Sanemi Shinazugawa's blade struck the joint of the dragon's claw, sparks bursting into a blinding white spray.
He was sent flying instead. His Nichirin Blade groaned under the strain, and blood from the torn web of his hand ran down past the guard.
Shara Ishvalda's shell remained as smooth as ever, without so much as a scratch.
"Fuck!" He spat out a mouthful of bloody foam and caught sight of Kyojuro Rengoku's flames exploding against Shara Ishvalda's back. The yellow-and-purple honeycomb pattern beneath remained completely intact. Gyomei Himejima's spiked flail smashed into the dragon's knee, only for the chain to recoil and lash the Stone Hashira himself.
A bloody glow suddenly swelled in the enormous beast's throat. Its fury at being humiliated by ants took physical form as a sonic blast-
ROOOOAAARRR!!!
Amplified by the resonance of all eight wings, the dragon's roar rang out like a billion death knells. Visible sound waves exploded outward in a sphere!
The five Hashira's defenses became tissue paper.
Two streams of bloody tears mixed with sand rolled down Gyomei Himejima's face as his eardrums ruptured. The ornate diamond accessories adorning Tengen Uzui's ears shattered, and blood sprayed from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth onto his face, where his makeup had peeled away. All five Hashira suffered severe internal injuries, deafness accompanied by bleeding organs. Five figures collapsed like puppets with severed strings.
At the heart of the sonic blast, the Sapphire Star used the tremors preceding the roar to slide aside-
Foresight Slash.
Clang-
Her blade blazed gold. In the next instant, her spinning Spirit Roundslash cleaved through the sound waves before erupting with dazzling red light.
Catching sight of the five Hashira at death's door, the Sapphire Star had already reached for the leather pouch behind her waist-whoosh!
Glowing green stardust scattered along the arc of her Long Sword, the crisp scent of new growth instantly overwhelming the stench of blood!
"Cough, cough...!" Kyojuro Rengoku suddenly pushed himself up and raised his head.
His ears, which had been injured for so long, were actually picking up the long-lost vibrations of sound again as the Lifepowder soaked into them!
He touched his ears, no longer bleeding, in disbelief. "I can actually hear... Tomioka coughing?"
But this was no time to relax!
Shara Ishvalda's superiority was absolute. Against the creature before them, their five demon-slaying blades were no different from bare fists!
Sanemi whipped his head around to look toward the other end of the battlefield.
The Sapphire Star was sliding out from beneath the shadow of a wingclaw's strike. Her blade skimmed the shell as she used it to propel herself into a spin, its crimson light tearing open a three-meter gash. Dragon blood gushed out like a fountain, and the wound's grotesquely curling edges made the five Hashira's cuts look like mosquito bites.
The Wind Hashira stared at the torn web of his hand, remembering how he had once forced this woman to defend herself against his wind blades in the hills behind headquarters.
Now he understood-she had held back enough to fill the Pacific Ocean.
"You have no experience fighting Elder Dragons! The base of the eastern wing bone-distract it for me in thirty breaths!" The Sapphire Star's shout shattered the dragon's roar.
Five blurred figures scattered once more at her command. Giyu Tomioka leaped across the quicksand to the left side of the dragon's head, the vortex of Constant Flux twisting around the golden glow of its tenderplate.
Kyojuro Rengoku's scorching wind blasted its right eye;
Tengen Uzui's bombs exploded across the bridge of its nose;
The Wind and Stone Hashira pinned down the bases of its wingclaws.
Shara Ishvalda shook its head in irritation. Its left claw ripped through the air toward Giyu Tomioka, the pressure of its swing collapsing the ground several feet.
Tomioka could even make out the trembling tips of its claws.
I'm going to die, Giyu thought.
Clack-clang!
The mechanical jaws of the Clutch Claw snapped shut! The Sapphire Star used its pull to launch herself into the air, swinging the enormous, several-hundred-kilogram blade through a full half circle-
"Shara! Getting distracted again, huh?!"
With the crushing weight of a falling meteor, the Fatalis Demolisher slammed into the dragon's jaw!
The mountain-sized dragon toppled sideways, and the earth-shaking shock wave hurled all five Hashira away.
Far away, Obanai stumbled in the middle of a mission. The demon hiding on a rooftop lost its footing too and fell, letting the Serpent Hashira slit its throat with a single stroke. Mitsuri Kanroji, soaking in a hot spring in the Swordsmith Village, choked down several mouthfuls of water, nearly filling her stomach.
Inside the Infinity Castle, Muzan clung desperately to a pillar with all four limbs. "Aaaah! Reinforce the space! Nakime!!!" The pillar writhed like a living snake, flinging him upside down.
In the smoke-filled crater, the Sapphire Star was already using her fall to drive her blade straight toward the fallen dragon's heart-
"Shara! Get the hell back where you belong!"
The tip had pierced three inches into its shell when Shara Ishvalda's enormous body abruptly blurred.
Whoosh-
The sound of rushing air tore through the silence. The enormous blade struck nothing but air before crashing into the ground and raising a towering sandstorm.
Giyu Tomioka crawled out of a mound of dirt and spat out a mouthful of mud and sand. "Where's that monster?"
"Motherfucker... my Helm Breaker at red sharpness... hit thin air again?" The Sapphire Star put away the Fatalis Demolisher. There was nothing behind her but collapsed gullies, like scars across the earth. What had once been Mount Dayue was now a field of shattered craters of varying depths.
Tengen Uzui wiped the sand from the corner of his mouth. His splendid clothes had long since become rags, and his voice trembled faintly with the relief of survival:
"Miss Sapphire Star... that monster... you knew it?"
"The Old Everwyrm, the legendary Shara Ishvalda." The hunter's tone was level as she sheathed her blade. "Back home, it was responsible for drastic ecological changes in the New World. Anyway, I call it Little Bro Dragon, or Shara. Pretty stubborn temper."
The Sound Hashira's gaze swept across the collapsed horizon. This so-called "Little Bro Dragon" had appeared for only a moment, yet an entire stretch of mountains had become a warped basin. Its power far exceeded any natural disaster he could conceive of. His voice came out dry:
"Back in your homeland... you fight monsters like that every day?"
The Sapphire Star shook her head. "Some are weaker, some are stronger. Shara isn't even a Forbidden Monster. It doesn't make the top tier."
Dead silence.
Gyomei Himejima crushed one of his prayer beads in his grip. Sanemi Shinazugawa tore off his shredded clothes:
"That doesn't count as strong?! Then what the hell are the strongest ones? Can they smash the moon?!"
Giyu Tomioka silently pulled his Nichirin Blade out of the ground. Its edge had curled until it resembled a saw. It would make a pretty suitable gift for Inosuke.
The Sapphire Star bent down to inspect the ground beneath her feet. Finding no materials, she sighed in disappointment:
"The badass ones can destroy a nation in an instant, or boil the sea... but that's not the issue..." The Sapphire Star dusted off her hands.
"Back home, Nergigante already gave Shara Ishvalda a fatal kiss with its jaws. Why... did it show up here?"
She looked toward the far end of the ruins, where the horizon shimmered and warped in the heat.
"How did I not notice it beforehand? There's no way an Elder Dragon could escape my senses... and that resurrected Hand Demon last time was the same... appearing out of nowhere, then vanishing into thin air..."
"Was it that demon called Hundred Faces?" Tengen Uzui pressed.
The Sapphire Star nodded, then shook her head. "Possibly, but resurrecting an Elder Dragon...? If it really was responsible, where could it hide in broad daylight?" Her sharp gaze swept over the dunes, gullies, and stretches of rubble, even the cracks in the collapsed mountain faces far away.
"You're all experts at killing demons. Did any of you notice even the slightest trace of a demon's presence? Nothing at all..."
Gyomei Himejima put away his broken prayer beads. "Whatever the case, the calamitous beast has fled. I suggest we return to headquarters and report."
Dusk settled. Six figures cast long shadows across the collapsed basin as they trudged toward the distant lights of the Demon Slayer Corps Headquarters.
No one spoke along the way. Of course, it would have been stranger if Giyu Tomioka had spoken. Even the wind's moan against the collapsed rock faces sounded especially grating.
Tengen Uzui stopped and looked toward the distant horizon as it swallowed the last trace of light. The collapsed mountain's outline resembled shattered fangs. That had once been Mount Dayue's summit.
"Listen..." His voice was dry, even his usual flamboyant flourishes reduced to rubble. "Miss Sapphire Star, back where you're from... humans..." His fingers gestured helplessly. "How do they survive... under things like that?"
The Sapphire Star thought for a moment. "That's why we have hunters back home. Just like your Demon Slayer Corps."
Sanemi Shinazugawa said nothing. He just kept kicking weathered chunks of basalt away.
Kyojuro Rengoku ran his fingers along his damaged blade, stopping at a jagged notch. It seemed he had never felt the limits of "ordinary steel" so clearly before. "Only today have I learned that beyond the well... there truly lies a vast sea."
"Hey, hey, hey!" She slapped Kyojuro Rengoku on the back hard enough to make his gold-and-red hair bounce three times.
"Everyone's got their specialty! My blade was born to scrape off dragon scales, and yours were born to chop off demon heads! Just like rats are born knowing how to burrow-" She suddenly lowered her voice. "-For example, Tengen, couldn't you save those explosions for demons? Why insist on testing them against an Elder Dragon's toughness?"
The Sound Hashira's mouth began twitching. He clutched his empty bomb pouch; every last one had merely tickled Shara Ishvalda during the fight.
The Sapphire Star continued, "Besides! If Elder Dragons really do keep showing up, I'll teach you how to hunt them!"
She patted the Fatalis Blade on her back. "Want to split the moon? Then you've got to use a Long Sword!"
The corner of Sanemi's eye twitched. "A Long Sword?"
"Exactly! The invincible Long Sword!" She abruptly drew her weapon, a ribbon of white blade-light cleaving the dusk. "Whether it's an Elder Dragon's kidneys or Muzan's skull! If one slash won't do it, make it two! Swing a full Spirit Blade Combo and who cares what kind of freak you're facing!"
Giyu Tomioka murmured very softly, "Next time... will you teach me?"
The Sapphire Star said, "Oho~ Comrade Water Hashira finally deigned to speak~"
The mood finally lightened considerably, and the lights of headquarters grew clearer and clearer...
Before you continue