With the hunter's directions this time, Xia Xi soon found a lead.
In less than half a day, he discovered a small, abandoned Buddhist shrine deep in the mountains.
A heavy stench of blood hung in the air.
He cut through the bushes and took a few more steps into the woods, where several animal carcasses, torn and bitten, lay carelessly scattered on the ground.
Because of the weather, the carcasses had already begun to rot.
Swarms of flies circled above them, and plenty of maggots wriggled over their remains.
The bite marks were shallow.
It was like someone picking a few pieces of fruit when hungry, taking a bite, deciding they tasted awful, and tossing them by the roadside.
No normal wild animal or hunter would waste prey like this.
Stranger still, no other scavengers had come to feed on the remains. They simply lay piled where they were, rotting away.
It was as though this area belonged to some absolute "overlord," one that even ordinary scavengers dared not approach.
Xia Xi stepped forward, snapped off a branch, and used it to shift the remains aside for a closer look.
Fortunately, the game had a cognitive buffering feature.
Although the sights and smells were realistic enough to make him gag, he felt little discomfort.
It was like clicking on a corpse model that dropped loot in one of those ancient PC games he used to play.
"So it really wasn't a bear..."
Xia Xi reached his conclusion.
He had never seen a bear in real life, but he knew them well in the game.
After all, more than one kindly "Mr. Bear" on Mount Sagiri had recently contributed a generous amount of medical experience to him.
It was a demon. No doubt about it.
His spirits lifted, and he immediately began searching outward from the Mountain God Shrine.
This was a special mechanic of his that he had discovered while playing.
Unlike the NPCs, who still had to obey the laws of science within the story.
No matter how much the swordsmen trained, their vision would inevitably suffer in the pitch-black night.
Although he also struggled to see when it was too dark, the game UI in his field of vision was unaffected by the game's environmental lighting.
However dark it became, once he entered a certain range, the system's red marker and name would appear above a demon's head.
Nobody else could do that.
It also gave him an enormous tactical advantage when searching for demons skilled at hiding.
He could even derive another ability from this system mechanic.
Provided those demons had no special transformation or concealment skills.
Even if a demon concealed its fangs and hid among a crowd, he could tell at a glance which ones were not human, as long as they were not too far away.
It was effectively a short-to-medium-range [Faction Identification] and [Enemy Detection Radar].
Sure enough.
In less than half an hour, Xia Xi found something.
While he was carefully inspecting a patch of bushes.
Out of the corner of his eye, at the edge of the system panel, he suddenly caught a faint red marker carrying a trace of hostility flash through the nearby woods.
It was about thirty meters away.
The other party consistently maintained roughly that distance. No matter where Xia Xi went, it neither approached nor moved farther away.
Had it set its sights on me?
Or was it secretly gauging my strength?
Without betraying anything, Xia Xi adjusted his direction, chopping branches and turning over soil as though he were still searching for clues.
In reality, he was quietly closing the distance.
Having played so many games, he considered himself very familiar with stealth sections.
As long as he stayed crouched and did not walk directly into the enemy's forward field of vision, they would usually act blind and let him creep right up to them...
Then.
Then Xia Xi saw a dark shadow suddenly leap out of the bushes and flee deeper into the forest without looking back!
How did it spot me?!
That made no sense!
Whatever he thought, Xia Xi dropped the act.
Wind Breathing instantly flowed throughout his body, rapidly boosting his physical capabilities.
He pushed off hard enough to leave a shallow crater in the ground and shot after it, trailing an afterimage.
If he let it get too far away, the system's UI would disappear.
The mountain forest's terrain was rugged and complicated, and the demon's speed and skill at escaping were astonishing.
But that was only by ordinary human standards.
Xia Xi's total stats were already at 70, not to mention his Breathing Style and the movement-speed boost from his [Running] passive.
The gap of less than thirty meters shrank almost visibly.
The demon clearly noticed this too.
As it fled desperately, it turned back and began cursing.
"You Demon Slayer Corps bastard! I've only eaten a few people! Do you really have to chase me this hard?!"
It actually felt wronged.
Hadn't it carefully hidden away in these remote mountains precisely to avoid the Demon Slayer Corps?
To avoid attracting too much attention, it had even restrained itself when eating people.
It only targeted people who lived alone deep in the mountains, or elderly people whose deaths would not trouble too many others.
It had even deliberately imitated a bear's feeding habits to cover its tracks.
How had a swordsman come knocking after only a few days?
"There are so many people in these villages! What's wrong with me eating a couple?"
Xia Xi: "???"
"Just listen to yourself."
In a rare moment of sarcasm, he retorted, "What's wrong with eating a couple of people? All I want is to borrow that head on your shoulders. Do you really have to run so fast?"
His words left the demon choking.
It roared, "How is that the same thing?"
Xia Xi said, "How is it any different?"
He was a staunch believer in human league-ism, after all. He never even picked nonhuman races in games.
Humanity! Loyalty! That was what he stood for!
Never mind that his opponent was a red-name monster. The "man-eating alien" race description alone was enough reason for him to chop it into mince.
As the distance continued to shrink, the demon knew it could not escape.
It stopped abruptly, turned, and snarled at Xia Xi as it assumed an attacking stance.
"Bastard! Don't think I'm actually scared of you!"
It had never wanted to provoke the Demon Slayer Corps.
When it discovered this swordsman wearing a Demon Slayer Corps uniform and carrying three swords.
It had forced down its appetite and planned to observe his strength from the shadows first.
To its limited understanding, someone covered in odds and ends-a mask, knotted cords, luggage, and three swords-did not look like one of those fresh-faced [Mizunoto]-rank rookies.
Hinoe? Or Hinoto?
But before it could figure anything out, the man had actually detected it and even pretended to search while drawing closer.
Its instincts told it this man was trouble, so it had decisively chosen to retreat.
Who could have known he would pursue it so relentlessly!
Taking advantage of me and refusing to let up, huh?!
Did he really think I was some helpless kitten?!
The demon's broad forehead glinted faintly blue beneath the moonlight. Its hair slowly began moving through the still air, and a pair of arms covered in knotted muscle rapidly sprouted from its temples.
It looked very...
Very abstract.
[Giant Red???] [Energy level: 39]
Xia Xi glanced at the information in the corner of his vision, and his mouth twitched.
After all that chasing, it was just a small fry without even a Blood Demon Art?
Its stats were not even as good as the cannon fodder from the Final Selection.
The demon clearly caught the change in Xia Xi's expression.
The excitement of a hunter spotting prey swiftly gave way to undisguised disdain.
"Little White," Xia Xi suddenly looked up and addressed a spot in the sky. "Could you give me a more challenging mission next time?"
"Caw! Kurumaji! No distractions during missions! Caw!"
The demon froze, then its fury erupted.
He's looking down on me, isn't he? He definitely is!
Its eyes turned blood-red, and the nails on all four arms instantly lengthened into blades as it charged straight at Xia Xi.
A straight flash of silver.
Its head parted from its body.
Shock and terror were still frozen on the demon's face, but its body had already begun turning to ash before it hit the ground.
[Wind Breathing LV.3 (+21)]
Xia Xi had barely even activated his Breathing Style.
After all, whether it was a Breathing Style or its accompanying sword forms.
They were all methods and techniques meant to compensate when a swordsman's physical stats were far inferior to a demon's.
They existed to make up for insufficient stats.
If his stats already exceeded the demon's, he naturally had no need for those methods.
By now, Xia Xi's stats were nearly twice his opponent's. Cutting it down was not quite as smooth as a hot knife through butter, but it was already little different from chopping vegetables.
[Skip cutscene]
"Hey, how about discussing it with the BOSS? Forget the Demon Moons, but at least arrange a halfway decent demon for me, would you?"
As he watched the Kasugai Crow leave to deliver its report, Xia Xi still could not resist making another attempt.
The answer he received was an angry squawk.
"It's Oyakata-sama, not Boss! Caw!"
"And caw! Slaying demons is a swordsman's duty! You must take every single one seriously!"
Xia Xi said, "Of course I fight seriously when I encounter one. But this is too inefficient. Just pass the message along. The BOSS will understand."
He believed that, given the precision of this game's setting, the Demon Slayer Corps' Oyakata-sama would certainly be no mediocrity.
Surely the man understood the importance of putting resources where they would do the most good.
For Xia Xi, the only things he needed to worry about were how quickly demons could be discovered in the game's historical setting, and how efficiently its dispatch center operated.
Still, as an organization that had endured for a thousand years.
It surely had its own distinctive command structure and methods of deploying personnel.
It could not really rely on a flock of crows flying around the world day and night, shouting themselves hoarse, could it?
"Oh, right. I'm planning to go study under the next Cultivator first."
"You must know the way, so just find me along the route when you come back."
The Kasugai Crow's feathers stood on end with rage. "Bastard! I can't read maps! I can't, caw!!"
Before you continue