"Cr-ack-"
A tooth-grating crack traveled clearly along the Nichirin Blade into Tanjiro's hands.
His Constant Flux, on which he had staked everything, had indeed struck its target.
Under the black blade, an enormous gash split open in that hideous spine formed from countless human bones.
But that was all.
It had not been severed.
An unimaginable force rebounded through the blade. Tanjiro felt as though both his arms were about to snap, and the webs of his hands tore open instantly, blood streaming out.
He and Inosuke beside him were both hurled away by that force, slamming hard into the wall of flesh behind them.
"ROAR-!"
A painful shriek, unlike a human voice and more like countless souls screaming at once, exploded in everyone's mind.
That lethal strike had unleashed Enmu's madness completely.
The entire train, that enormous monster of flesh and blood, entered its final frenzy.
All the flesh inside the carriages proliferated madly at an unprecedented speed. From the floors, walls, ceilings... countless tentacles, bone spikes, and sharp teeth surged wildly out of every corner, no longer to feed, but purely to destroy, to tear every living thing inside the carriages to pieces.
"Damn it! So close..."
Tanjiro struggled to his feet. As he looked at the apocalyptic scene before him, a sense of helplessness welled up inside him.
They had already given everything they had, yet they were still one final step short.
"Headlong Rush!"
Inosuke, however, was not discouraged in the slightest. Roaring, he used his two battered blades to fend off the flesh-and-blood attacks surging toward them like a tsunami.
But everyone knew they could not hold out much longer.
Meanwhile, on the train's roof.
The violent tremors beneath his feet and the eruption of demonic aura shooting into the sky, mingled with pain