Blood-the thick smell of blood. That was the first thing Takanashi Rokuno sensed when he opened his eyes.
The back of his head rested against cold, damp flagstones.
A bone-chilling cold crept up his spine, and searing pain exploded inside his skull.
Fragments of unfamiliar memories turned into countless sharp knives, churning madly through his mind.
One second earlier, he had still been Lin Ye, an ordinary student lying in bed, frantically tapping his phone as he controlled Kai and slaughtered enemies across the King's Canyon.
The next second, a sense of weightlessness and tearing struck him at once.
Rokuya fought back the violent cramps churning through his stomach and dug all ten fingers into the muddy ground.
He bit through the tip of his tongue, using the rusty taste of blood to stimulate his nerves, and forced his upper body upright.
He figured out two things.
First, he had transmigrated into a world called Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
As for the plot, Breathing Styles, or Hashira, he knew absolutely nothing. He only vaguely knew that the ruler of this world was called Muzan Kibutsuji, a man-eating monster.
Rokuya lowered his head.
By the faint moonlight spilling in through the alley entrance, he saw what he looked like now.
A tattered coarse-cloth shirt hung from his skeletal shoulders.
Some sharp object had slashed several long tears through the fabric, their edges caked with dried black blood.
His hands were a size smaller, his skin the sallow yellow of chronic malnutrition.
This was the body of a fourteen-year-old boy.
His right hand clutched a broken wooden stick.
Ahead lay a dark, cramped dead-end alley.
Tall brick walls rose on either side, with large patches of plaster peeling away to expose the blackened bricks beneath.
Several mutilated corpses lay strewn across the alley entrance.
Blood pooled into little streams, flowing through the cracks between the paving stones to Rokuya's feet.
Three twisted black figures stepped through the carnage, drawing closer one step at a time.
They were three blue-faced, fanged monsters.
The demon in the middle was the largest.
Its spine protruded grotesquely, stretching the clothing on its back into a few strips of ragged cloth.
It crouched on all fours, like an enormous spider.
Dark yellow drool dripped through the gaps between its jutting teeth.
Drip.
The demon on the left had only one eye.
Half its face had rotted away, exposing a stark white cheekbone.
The demon on the right had a pair of extremely thick arms.
The nails on all ten fingers were a full half-foot long, their color a sickly purplish black.
The overpowering stench of corpses mingled with blood, pressing toward him like a solid wall.
Heavy panting came from behind Rokuya.
In the corner, a black-haired girl in a worn kimono huddled in the shadows.
She knelt on both knees, spreading her arms to shield the younger girl in her embrace.
Fourteen-year-old Kanae Kocho trembled all over.
The hem of her kimono had been torn, exposing calves covered in scrapes, and blood stained her white tabi socks red.
Her teeth had bitten through her lower lip, and thin trails of blood slid down her pale chin and dripped onto the front of her kimono.
Shinobu Kocho clung tightly to her older sister's clothes.
The eleven-year-old girl buried her face in her sister's slender chest.
Her thin shoulders shook violently, but she did not dare let out a single sob.
"Meat..."
The one-eyed demon forced garbled syllables from its throat.
It raised a withered arm and pointed at the sisters in the corner.
"Such tender flesh... they must taste delicious..."
The hulking demon in the middle split its mouth into a grin, its scarlet tongue licking the tip of its nose.
"Eat the brat with the stick first."
"His bones are brittle. They'll be easy to chew."
The long-clawed demon let out a strange laugh.
Its sharp nails scraped against one another with an ear-piercing rasp.
"I want the older one. You can have the organs."
The three demons divided up their prey as though no one else were there, never stopping their advance.
They were in no hurry.
In this enclosed dead-end alley, their prey could not escape even with wings.
The distance kept shrinking.
Ten paces.
Eight paces.
Rokuya did not retreat.
He swallowed dryly, his Adam's apple bobbing.
The muscles in his legs tensed, and his feet ground against the loose stones with a faint scraping sound.
He stepped forward, placing his thin body squarely between the demons and Kanae and Shinobu.
There was no begging, no screaming, not even half a step backward.
Rokuya gripped the broken wooden stick with both hands and held it across his chest.
Veins bulged on the backs of his hands, and his knuckles whitened from the force of his grip.
He stared fixedly at the hulking demon in the middle, his clenched teeth grinding.
"You talk too much."
Rokuya spat out the words.
His voice was hoarse and thick with the taste of blood, yet rang out distinctly in the deathly silent alley.
Kanae jerked her head up.
She stared at the thin figure standing before her. The night wind lifted the boy's ragged hem, and the broken stick trembled in the wind, but he never lowered it.
The hulking demon in the middle froze for half a second.
It could not understand why a frail human child dared speak to it in that tone.
Then its prey's provocation sent the beast into an utter rage.
"I'll rip out your guts!"
The hulking demon drove all four limbs against the ground and launched itself forward.
The flagstones shattered, sending fragments flying.
A blood-reeking gust struck Rokuno in the face.
The demon's enormous body sprang into the air, blotting out the faint moonlight at the alley entrance.
Five purplish-black claws tore through the air with a shrill whistle.
Their target: Rokuya's heart.
The distance vanished in an instant.
Three meters.
Two meters.
One meter.
Rokuya could even make out the bulging blue veins beneath the demon's skin and smell its nauseating corpse stench.
He did not dodge.
This weak body could not manage any evasive movement at all.
He tightened both hands around the stick, twisted at the waist, and swung hard at the incoming claws.
"You've gone too far!"
The wooden stick swept through the air in a blur.
Kanae squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her sister tightly against her chest, letting out a cry of despair.
Crack-
The stick struck the claws and instantly shattered into countless splinters.
The sharp nails pierced through the barrier of splinters without resistance.
At the critical instant, just before the claws pierced his skin.
An emotionless mechanical voice thundered deep inside Rokuya's skull.
"Ding-" "Host detected facing a lethal crisis." "Heavenly Lord Gratitude Value System activated." "Honor of Kings · Magic Family · Kai Template loading..."
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