"You bastard!" Rui's furious roar shattered the brief, deathly silence. After being interrupted over and over, he had lost his cool.
Seeing Kirishima Bupai not only stepping on his "elder sister," but also brazenly interrupting and humiliating him...
And even attempting to dismantle the "bonds" he regarded as the pillar of his life, his reason snapped completely.
In his fury, Rui violently flung both hands forward.
Buzzz-!
Swish, swish, swish-!
Countless tough, razor-sharp white threads swept toward Kirishima Bupai and the female demon beneath his foot in a dense, all-encompassing cutting assault.
Wherever the threads passed, they tore the air apart and plowed deeper furrows into the ground.
This strike carried all of Rui's rage at being humiliated and having his core beliefs questioned. Its power far surpassed any move he had used against Tanjiro.
"Mr. Bupai! Watch out!!!"
Behind the broken tree, Tanjiro witnessed the terrifying assault, and his heart clenched. Ignoring his own injuries, he screamed a warning.
Yet Kirishima Bupai, standing at the center of the storm, did not even lift his eyelids.
He even had the leisure to lower his head and lightly nudge the trembling shoulder of the female demon beneath him with his toe, his tone openly mocking. "See that, dear 'elder sister'?"
"Is this how your family gets along? One disagreement and he goes for the kill, including you, his 'family,' in the attack?"
His voice was bone-chillingly cold, yet carried just a trace of ridicule. "Twisted control issues, pathological possessiveness, coupled with extreme selfishness and fragility..."
"Tsk. These so-called bonds of yours really are... infuriating to look at..."
Just as the dense spider threads, capable of slicing even steel into fragments, were about to touch the hem of Kirishima Bupai's clothes.
Clink!
An extremely faint scrape of metal rang out.
Kirishima Bupai's right hand had merely rested ever so casually on the hilt of the Nichirin Blade at his waist.
With a perfunctory motion, his thumb lightly flicked the sword guard upward.
Buzzz-!
A terrifying, invisible force erupted instantly with him at its center.
The spider threads of Thread Prison, sharp enough to cut through metal and jade and imbued with Rui's furious power, met that invisible ripple.
Pff! Pff! Pff! Pff! ...
Without warning, every incoming spider thread instantly turned to the finest powder, still a foot away from Kirishima Bupai's body.
Without a sound, they vanished completely into the air! As though they had never existed!
"Wha...?!"
The fury on Rui's face instantly froze, turning into utter astonishment and disbelief.
His crimson pupils contracted sharply as he stared fixedly at his empty hands...
Then he abruptly raised his head to look at the white-haired figure still standing in the same spot, without the slightest change in posture.
Impossible! This is impossible! He didn't even draw his sword... What exactly did he do?!
For the first time, a chill born of an unknown power raced up his spine.
"Too slow."
A voice heavy with weariness and undisguised contempt sounded right beside his ear like a phantom.
Every hair on Rui's body stood on end. He had not even seen how his opponent moved, and he whipped his head around...
At some unknown moment, Kirishima Bupai had appeared beside him in an extremely strange, offset stance.
Rui faced south, while Kirishima Bupai faced north. They were almost back-to-back, yet only inches apart.
Kirishima Bupai did not even look at Rui. He merely tilted his head and idly picked his ear with his little finger.
His other hand scratched at the collar behind his neck, while he twisted his neck with a series of cracks and made an exceedingly aggravating series of tutting sounds.
"You're still not good enough!"
He delivered his verdict lazily, every word lashing Rui's pride like a whip. "With that little ability, you dare play at some eternal bond like everyone else? Even children playing house do a better job than you."
"You bastard-!!!"
His extreme fear was instantly overwhelmed by even fiercer humiliation and rage.
Like a venomous spider driven into an utter frenzy, Rui let out a hysterical roar.
He abruptly retreated to put distance between them, his face filled with shock and lingering fear, but even more with the madness of someone driven into a corner.
A deep crimson instantly spread from his fingertips, rapidly covering his entire palms.
At the same time, the threads dancing around him abruptly changed color.
The threads, previously as pure and bright as moonlight, now looked as though they had just been dredged from a pool of blood, giving off a thick, bloody stench.
The air grew thick and scorching with the appearance of these blood-colored spider threads.
All ten of Rui's fingers danced wildly as though playing a melody of death, countless lethal dark-red threads weaving an inescapable net around him.
Yet faced with this terrifying killing move, enough to put even a Hashira-rank swordsman on full guard, Kirishima Bupai's attention seemed to have... wandered a little?
He tilted his head, his gaze behind his sunglasses fixed with interest on the spider threads in Rui's hands that radiated ominous fluctuations. Unconsciously rubbing his chin, he muttered to himself:
"Hmm... this color... this texture... this hardness... tsk, tsk..."
His tone carried a strange hint of inquiry. "If these threads could be extracted and used to knit sweaters, pants, hats, and things... wouldn't they be especially tough and durable?"
"And warm in winter, cool in summer, impervious to blades and spears? Maybe they could even be mass-produced... I'd be rich..."
This absurd thought lingered in his mind for less than half a second.
"Holy shit!"
Kirishima Bupai abruptly shook his head and patted his cheeks with a look of disgust. "What the hell am I thinking?! Has capitalist thinking invaded my brain?!"
"Damn it! It's all that fucking moron Muzan Kibutsuji's fault! Now my head's full of ideas about squeezing out surplus value! Forgive me, forgive me!"
While he was busy mocking himself, Rui, whose buildup of power had reached its peak across from him, made a declaration of utter fury. "You insolent wretch! You blasphemer! You will never understand!"
"These are the most sacred, inviolable bonds between me and my family! You've insulted my most precious treasure! Trampled on the meaning of my existence!"
"I'll tear you into pieces! Make you die screaming in endless agony!" Rui violently flung his hands, the spider threads seething as his roar filled with twisted obsession and bone-deep hatred.
"Ah..."
Kirishima Bupai gave a long, utterly perfunctory yawn, even wiping nonexistent tears from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.
"Are you finished yet? You keep repeating the same few lines over and over. You're putting me to sleep."
Before you continue