Stay Hanging Here

"I'm a reasonable man. I've always believed in pragmatism. Killing you would dirty my blade and get me into trouble for breaking Corps rules." Rokuya looked at him coldly. "So I won't kill you."

Hope suddenly flared in Tanaka's clouded eyes. "Thank you! Thank you, sir, for sparing my-"

"Kasugai Crow!" Rokuya ignored him completely, tipping his head back and blowing a piercing whistle.

Flap, flap-

A black crow emerged from the darkness and landed on Rokuya's shoulder, calling in a hoarse voice, "Caw! Lord Rokuya! Caw! What are your orders, Lord Rokuya?"

Rokuya pointed at Tanaka, who hung suspended in the air, his tone as flat as if he were dealing with a bag of garbage. "Notify headquarters. Kanoto-ranked swordsman Tanaka was captured by a demon during the Mochizuki Village mission after recklessly advancing in pursuit of credit. Not only did he fail to protect civilians, he fled during combat and cursed his comrades, severely damaging the Demon Slayer Corps' reputation. The demon has now crippled both his arms and his ribs, leaving him an invalid. I have rescued him. Please have the Kakushi Corps send people to carry him back for trial."

"Caw! Understood! Desertion in combat! Damage to the Corps' reputation! Reporting immediately! Reporting immediately!" The Kasugai Crow flapped its wings and shot out of the cavern like a black shadow.

"No... don't!" At those words, Tanaka's eyes widened as though they might split open. Utter despair drove him to struggle frantically, pulling at the wounds in his shoulders until his whole body convulsed with pain.

Report him to headquarters? With desertion in combat on his record and his body crippled like this, even if he survived, he would be publicly stripped of his status as a swordsman and might even face trial! Compared with dying now, the humiliation of having his reputation destroyed and being driven out of the Demon Slayer Corps like a stray dog was worse than hell for someone who cared so desperately about saving face!

"Takanashi! You've gone too far! You're driving me to my death!!!" Tanaka cursed shrilly. "Even as a ghost, I won't let you off!"

"Gone too far?" Rokuya turned around and slung the three-hundred-jin blade back onto his back, leaving Tanaka only the sight of his proud, cold figure from behind.

"In this world, demons eat people, and the strong prey on the weak. If I weren't strong, I'd be the one hanging on the wall being mocked today. You want to become a demon?" Rokuya stopped and turned his head, a terrifying flash of killing intent crossing his silver-blue eyes. "If you become a demon, I'll personally use this blade to cut your neck again. Survive one strike from me before you talk, trash. For now, stay hanging here."

With that, Rokuya never looked back again and strode toward the cavern's exit.

The instant he stepped out of the cave, the first ray of dawn pierced the heavy curtain of night on the eastern horizon, spilling over his bloodstained black uniform and short silver hair.

The morning breeze swept through the mountain forest, and at last, the air carried the fresh scent of vegetation.

Grrrrumble-

A thunderous protest rose from Rokuya's stomach, shattering the exquisitely beautiful, tragic tableau.

Rokuya's face, previously as stern as a deity's, instantly crumpled. He rubbed his stomach in pain and sighed. "Activating Magic Power is a bottomless pit. I'm starving... Better hurry down the mountain. I saved the people of Mochizuki Village, so they ought to give me a few filling meals, right? I want ten... no, thirty rice balls!"

With a massive blade larger than himself on his back, the boy walked toward the village below, facing the morning sun and grumbling curses.

What he did not know was that after this night, accounts of "the silver-haired shura carrying a door-sized blade," "slaying fifty demons single-handedly," and "publicly punishing a cowardly senior" would sweep through the entire Demon Slayer Corps like a storm, carried by the Kasugai Crow's reports and the surviving villagers' word of mouth.

An "outsider" far beyond the norm, unbound by rules, was forcefully barging into this world that had been shrouded in despair for a thousand years, in an utterly overbearing manner.

The first ray of morning sunlight, like a sharp golden longsword, pierced the gloom that hung year-round over the northwestern frontier and cleaved straight into the hellish natural cavern.

Carrying Shura, the dark-blue, door-sized great blade weighing three hundred jin, Rokuya slowly stepped out of the dark, damp cave mouth. His black uniform was covered in dark-red bloodstains, and his deep-blue haori snapped in the morning breeze. Beneath his short silver hair, traces of the silver-blue arcane aura still lingered in his deep eyes, his entire body radiating a suffocating, shura-like murderous presence.

Behind him were a hundred and twelve ragged, skeletal villagers from Mochizuki Village. Supporting one another, they staggered out of the "human livestock farm" where they had been kept for countless days and nights. When sunlight fell across their faces, covered in grime and scars, many instinctively raised their hands to shield themselves from its dazzling yet incomparably warm light. Then, after suppressing everything to the limit, they broke into loud sobs.

"We survived..."

"We're saved... We're really saved!"

"The gods have answered us-"

Amid the villagers' cries, the dark-blue screen on Rokuya's retinas flickered at a frantic rate.

[Ding! Extreme gratitude detected from Mochizuki Village resident 'Yamada'. Gratitude Points +50!]

[Ding! Extreme gratitude detected from Mochizuki Village resident 'Yumi'. Gratitude Points +50!]

[Ding!...]

A dense barrage of notifications pattered through Rokuya's mind like rain striking banana leaves, but he did not find it noisy. Instead, an almost imperceptible smile curved his lips. His Gratitude Points had already passed the five-thousand mark toward the end of the battle, and without hesitation, he had exchanged them in the system shop for the core piece of equipment he had long coveted-the Shadow Battle Axe.

Now, Rokuya could clearly feel an immense, mysterious power coursing through every part of his body. It was the power of the armor-breaking law! The Shadow Battle Axe not only provided substantial bonuses to physical attack and health, but, more importantly, it possessed the unique passive "Sunder." He clenched his fist slightly, his bones giving a series of crisp cracks. He felt intensely confident that if he faced that three-meter-tall mutant demon leader again now, he would not even need to activate his arcane aura. With nothing but raw physical strength and ordinary slashes, he could instantly tear through its hard scales along with its flesh and bones!

"So this is what power feels like..." Rokuya drew a deep breath of the cool morning air. With the Shadow Battle Axe's enhancement, most of the intense fatigue caused by activating Arcana Power had dissipated. In its place came extreme hunger, surging from his stomach straight to the crown of his head, almost devouring his reason.

His enormous appetite, combined with the expenditure of fighting above his level, made him want to devour an entire cow raw.

"My lord! Our savior!"

Thud-

An old man with a front tooth half chipped away stumbled up to Rokuya, leaning on a battered wooden stick, and slammed both knees onto the gravel-strewn dirt. He was Mochizuki Village's chief. Tears streamed down his aged face as he pressed his forehead firmly against the ground, even knocking it hard enough to draw blood.

"If not for you, our entire village would have become food for those monsters... You are the sun god who cleaved through the night! Please accept our bow!"

At the village chief's cry, the hundred-odd villagers behind him dropped to their knees in unison like toppling dominoes, the dull thuds of their foreheads striking the ground blending together.

"Stop." Rokuya frowned slightly. He was not accustomed to such excessively emotional scenes, especially when he was so hungry his eyes were practically glowing green. "I'm not some sun god. My name is Rokuya, and I'm a swordsman of the Demon Slayer Corps. Right now, I need food. A great deal of food."

Hearing their savior's request, the village chief sprang up as though electrocuted and shouted through the gap in his teeth, "Quick! Back to the village! Bring out the cured meat hidden in the cellar, the game hunted in the hills out back, and all the rice! All of it! Light the fires! Cook for our divine lord!"