For a moment, it was hard to tell who the demon was

As the cries rang out, Gyomei Himejima, who had already been awakened by the children's commotion, immediately rushed toward the building where they slept.

Blind from birth, he had used his natural gifts to develop his hearing and sense of touch to an extraordinary degree. He could even identify people by their presence. In everyday life, if one ignored his eyes, which showed only their whites, there was no telling him apart from someone with normal sight.

That was also why the abbot and the other monks had felt comfortable leaving him behind to look after the children.

At the same time, the last wisp of demon-repelling incense smoke inside the room dissipated. Kanzaki Kumo immediately shouted, "Xiaoxiang, Huaxia, come back! Stay away from the door!"

Before he had finished speaking, the two little girls closest to the wooden door had barely managed to turn their heads. Before they could even move their bodies, the door shattered, sending fragments flying in every direction.

The two little girls' frail bodies were hurled through the air, and several wooden splinters nearly as thick as a baby's forearm pierced their arms and thighs.

"Ahh, to think that brat really managed to destroy that incense burner demons hate." Standing outside, the demon watched the children scramble in terror to the corners of the room, where they curled up and trembled. A vicious grin spread across its face.

Only then did Kanzaki Kumo get a clear look at the demon.

Calling it a blue-faced, fanged monster was no exaggeration whatsoever.

It had blue-green skin and a red, carrot-shaped horn on either side of its forehead. Its viciously grinning face looked even more frightening in the dim light. The mouthful of sharp teeth exposed by that grin, along with the foul, bloody stench of its breath, made it all the clearer that this was no human, but a man-eating demon.

Just as the demon was about to step inside, a noise beside it caught its attention.

"Monster! You won't hurt the children!"

When Gyomei reached the building where the children were, he could sense that an utterly filthy figure brimming with malice had just casually smashed the wooden door. The cries of more than a dozen children inside, filled with extreme unease and terror, reached his ears.

"Monster! You won't hurt the children!" Realizing that the children were in danger, Gyomei stamped hard against the ground. His nearly two-meter-tall body shot through a cloud of dust toward the demon about to step through the doorway.

The demon had only just turned its head when it saw a fist almost as large as its own head already closing in on the tip of its nose.

The next instant, its vision tumbled wildly as the wooden building grew farther and farther away.

Desperate to save the children, Gyomei had unleashed a full-force punch that knocked the head clean off this newly turned demon.

Even Gyomei himself froze for a moment. He had always known that his strength and physique were unlike those of ordinary people, and he normally restrained his strength as much as possible when interacting with others. As a result, even he had no idea how powerful his full-force strike was.

Kanzaki Kumo was stunned as well. From the memories of his past life he had just received, he knew that Gyomei would be powerful in the future. But Gyomei was not even twenty yet, and the temple's meals were only enough to put something in their stomachs and keep them from starving to death.

In other words, Gyomei had spent all these years chronically malnourished.

Even so, a full-force strike from him could knock the head off a demon whose body was clearly tougher than an ordinary adult's.

All he could say was that this really was the man who would one day use a meteor hammer to cosplay as an attack helicopter. His strength was truly immense.

But conventional methods could not kill demons. The body that had lost its head could still move.

"Mr. Himejima, watch out behind you!"

Kanzaki Kumo's shout snapped Gyomei out of his daze. The rush of air behind him was almost against his skin, leaving him no choice but to roll forward to evade the attack.

But he was still a step too slow. Although the demon had temporarily lost its sight after its head was knocked off, Gyomei's large frame had become a disadvantage at that moment. The demon's attack still left a wound across his back.

It was not deep, but it had drawn blood.

The pain in his back made Gyomei grunt, but he also quickly rose to face the headless demon moving on its own.

In his perception, it was clearly a humanoid monster, yet it could still move normally after having its head knocked off. Its claws were absurdly sharp, too; even a slight graze could draw his blood.

And, if his senses were not mistaken, the monster's head was growing back at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Little did he know that the demon was even more shocked. A human had knocked its head off with a single punch. For an instant, even it had trouble telling which of them was the demon.

"Ordinary methods can't kill a monster like this. We need sunlight. For now, we have to find a way to restrict its movements." Just as human and demon alike paused in surprise at each other, Kanzaki Kumo's voice rang out again.

"Brat!"

The demon, whose mouth had already grown back, immediately let out a threatening growl at Kanzaki Kumo.

Of course it knew its own fatal weakness, but it had never expected a child here to know as well. Information about demons clearly did not circulate among ordinary people. Hadn't that fellow, whose destructive power made him seem more demonic than a demon, been stunned by its ability to survive decapitation?

But the demon had come here to eat, not to fight people. So, as its head regenerated, it tried to find a way to get around Gyomei and snatch a few children.

Gyomei's punch had already made it abandon any thought of fighting him head-on. The only reason it dared to stay here instead of turning and running was that it was so difficult to kill.

But it could not linger too long, either. Although it was only midnight and dawn was still several hours away, it knew that an organization called the Demon Slayer Corps existed in this world specifically to deal with demons like itself.

The Demon Slayer Corps possessed Nichirin Blades, which could kill demons without sunlight. To a demon that had only recently turned, like itself, the threat posed by the Demon Slayer Corps was considerable.

While the demon was still trying to think, Gyomei had already taken action after hearing Kanzaki Kumo's reminder.

How could one restrain a monster that would not die even after its head was knocked off?

An ordinary person would think of trapping it with sufficiently sturdy ropes, an iron cage, or something similar. But Gyomei was no ordinary person, so his method was to break the monster's limbs, torso, and even its head over and over again until the sun rose.

Thud!

Crack.

"Damn human-"

"Aaagh-!"

"I'll kill you!!"

"I-"

Thump!

Amid a series of dull impacts and the demon's curses, Gyomei began his own unique method of restricting its movements.

The absolute disparity in strength left the demon being battered like a punching bag in his hands. Its limbs were broken again as soon as they regenerated, and its head was knocked off again as soon as it grew back. Gyomei's terrifying strength even sank the ground beneath them a little, forming a shallow pit. The prayer beads he usually wore around his wrist had long since scattered across the ground.

Seeing this, Kanzaki Kumo stopped the children who were trying to go over and get in the way while approaching the two injured girls.

A quick inspection showed that, although their injuries were severe, fortunately the wooden splinters piercing their arms and thighs had not damaged any arteries. Their lives were not in immediate danger.

Since he knew nothing about medicine, Kanzaki Kumo did not dare move the two girls rashly for fear of causing further injury. He could only turn his attention back to Gyomei.

Although Gyomei overwhelmingly surpassed the demon in strength, after taking several blows, it had been driven into a bestial frenzy. Relying on its powerful regeneration, it began trading injuries with Gyomei, and for a time, it actually showed signs of breaking free of his suppression.