There were clearly nine!

"Huh?!"

Inosuke's vision blurred, and that towering figure appeared before him in a wave of heat.

He had not even seen how the man moved!

Thud!

The next instant, accompanied by a dull thump, a merciless fist slammed into Inosuke's boar mask.

"Aaagh-!"

Inosuke screamed as countless stars spun wildly before his eyes, and the whole world reeled around him.

The intense dizziness instantly robbed him of his balance.

"Hey, wild boar!"

Kirishima Bupai withdrew his hand, his tone stern and brooking no argument. "If you're injured, stay down! Stop twisting yourself into all these ridiculous poses to get yourself killed!"

"What, haven't you broken enough bones yet? Or haven't you sloshed all the water in your head around enough?" Pinching the bridge of his nose, he bluntly exposed Inosuke's pretense of holding up.

"D-damn you... I'm... definitely going to... beat you..." Inosuke, dazed by the blow, blustered as his body swayed like a drunk's before finally collapsing in a limp heap.

But even lying in the cold mud, he still unconsciously muttered about his obsession.

An eerie silence fell over the scene.

On the ground, the Spider Demon, reduced to a torso with its life cut short by the Bright Red Blade, still let out faint, agonized hisses.

Its densely packed compound eyes were filled with boundless terror of Kirishima Bupai.

Its remaining torso writhed futilely, trying to escape this devil who radiated the aura of the sun, but to no avail.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk..."

Looking at its wretched, unsightly state, Kirishima Bupai clicked his tongue impatiently.

He casually raised his hand, and his blade flashed.

"Squelch."

A massive head covered in a carapace and compound eyes shot into the sky, then rapidly dissolved into drifting ash in midair.

The ruined body likewise turned swiftly to ash like a burning scrap of paper, leaving only a patch of scorched earth.

Kirishima Bupai lifted his foot and casually ground it against the ashes, as though stamping out an insignificant spark.

He looked down at Inosuke, who lay beside him, still muttering in a daze, and offered an explanation with a hint of speechlessness in his tone.

"Idiot, that thing wasn't one of the Twelve Kizuki."

He nudged the remaining scorch marks on the ground with his foot. "Since when were the Twelve Kizuki that pathetic? It couldn't even take one slash."

"Wh-what?!"

Those words struck Inosuke's muddled brain like a thunderbolt, forcibly clearing some of his dizziness in an instant.

He struggled to lift his head, disbelief all over his face. "How is that possible?! Tanpachiro told me it was! No! It was Tanjiro who told me!"

"Damn it! That bastard Charcoal Seller lied to me?!" The enormous gap between expectation and reality nearly drove him mad.

Kirishima Bupai clearly had no interest in getting to the bottom of it. He waved a hand. "Enough. I don't have time to waste here with you."

He turned to leave, then seemed to remember something and tossed a remark over his shoulder. "While you're recovering, I suggest you don't just nurse your injuries. Nurse that brain of yours too. Use it more so it doesn't rust."

"N-nurse my brain?!" Those words instantly set Inosuke off again, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Even sprawled on the ground, he craned his neck and roared, "I, Inosuke, am the smartest one in the mountains! I just can't be bothered to think!"

"Hey! What's with that look like you're staring at an idiot?! Take it back!"

With a chuckle, Kirishima Bupai stopped and turned around, looking down at the furious boar head in the mud.

He leisurely raised a hand and dug in his ear with his little finger, then... picked his nose in an exceedingly crude but thoroughly mocking gesture.

Finally, he flicked it toward Inosuke with utter disdain.

"But you can't even count properly." His tone held the helplessness of someone caring for an idiot. "You were hollering about four legs and eight legs just now. How come I didn't know it had twelve legs? Did the wild boars in the mountains teach you math?"

"Y-you bastard! That was an accident!" Inosuke flushed scarlet, feeling that his intelligence had suffered an unprecedented insult.

"Oh? An accident?" A nasty smile curled Kirishima Bupai's lips.

He slowly fished nine square pieces of foil-wrapped chocolate out of his uniform pocket, which actually held more than met the eye.

Squatting down before Inosuke, he arranged them as though laying out a game board.

With unhurried movements, he neatly placed the nine chocolates into a standard three-by-three grid on a relatively clean patch of dirt.

"Look..."

Kirishima Bupai dusted off his hands and pointed at the chocolates on the ground, his tone as flat as though he were stating an obvious fact.

"There are eight chocolates here. Ration them, and they should give you enough energy to last until the Kakushi arrive." With that, he made to stand up and leave.

"E-eight?!" Like a firecracker set alight, Inosuke jerked his head around and struggled to sit up.

He pointed at the chocolates and bellowed, "Are your eyes on top of your head, you white-haired bastard?! There are clearly nine! Three, six, nine! Nine, plain as day! Your brain doesn't even work as well as mine!!!"

Hearing his retort, Kirishima Bupai gave an exceptionally punchable snort.

Far from getting angry, he grabbed the struggling Inosuke and hauled him over, forcing him to face the grid on the ground.

Taking one of Inosuke's fingers, he firmly pressed it onto the first chocolate.

"Watch closely, wild boar, and listen to me count." Kirishima Bupai's voice carried an unquestionable authority.

"One." The finger touched the first piece.

"A pair." The finger quickly slid across the second.

"Two." At this count, Kirishima Bupai immediately pressed the finger onto the third piece.

"Three."

"Four."

"Five."

"Six."

"Seven."

"Eight." At that, Kirishima Bupai's finger stopped on the ninth piece, finishing the count exactly.

Kirishima Bupai released Inosuke's hand, looking as though it were perfectly obvious. "Done. Eight pieces. Any problem?"

Inosuke was full of question marks. "...???"

He instantly turned to stone, becoming a giant reaction image filled with question marks.

Tiny white bubbles signifying mental overload seemed to keep rising and bursting around his boar mask.

His green eyes stared fixedly at the nine chocolates on the ground and the path Kirishima Bupai's finger had just traced, his brain's CPU completely fried.

"Three, six, nine..."

Inosuke muttered unconsciously, instinctively feeling that three groups of three made nine.

But that count of "one, a pair, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight" just now sounded... perfectly fine? Every piece had been touched, and the final count was eight?!

"No! Impossible!"

Inosuke shook his head violently and threw himself toward the chocolates, extending an uninjured finger to imitate Kirishima Bupai... inhaling, exhaling, shrugging his shoulders...

Only then did he begin counting with the utmost seriousness. "One, a pair, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight... huh? Where's nine?!"

After counting to eight, he found the ninth chocolate lying there all alone, uncounted.

He grew so frantic that sweat covered his head. He counted from another direction, only to get the same result.

As long as he used Kirishima Bupai's method of starting with "one, a pair, two," he always ended up leaving one out!

"Why the hell is this happening?! Isn't three times three nine?! Why does it come out as eight?!"

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible-!!!"

Inosuke sank completely into a mire of logic and a storm in his head.

Clutching his boar mask, he frantically spun around beside the nine chocolates and pounded the ground, howling in agony.

Clearly, he had now encountered the greatest unsolved mystery of his life! Why were there eight pieces?!