With past-life memories awakened, who didn't have a cheat?

The demon had completely lost its appetite. All it wanted now was to escape this terrifying man who seemed more demonic than a demon.

But how could Gyomei possibly let it go? This filthy, vicious monster was practically immortal. If he let it escape, there was no telling when it might sneak back to kill people.

If Kanzaki Kumo hadn't shouted earlier, Gyomei wouldn't have arrived so quickly. Even a delay of a few seconds would surely have left more than half the children inside dead or injured.

The monster could barely fight back against Gyomei, but it could crush the children inside as easily as pinching them between its fingers.

"You've really made me angry!"

Suddenly, the demon tore off one of its own arms, briefly breaking free of Gyomei's hold. Its innate abilities kept it from dying, but they didn't erase the pain of having its limbs and head broken over and over. To avoid taking any more blows and being held there until sunrise or the Demon Slayer Corps arrived, it had no choice but to endure the pain and rip off its arm.

Gyomei wasn't in very good shape either. The prolonged, intense assault had taken a heavy toll on his chronically malnourished body. The demon had also landed several counterattacks by trading injuries, leaving him with a few wounds. He had kept them away from his vital areas, though, so they wouldn't affect his fighting ability in the short term.

After taking a slight breather, Gyomei closed in again. Blind from birth, he struggled to match the demon's agility. If he let it break completely free of his control, the children behind him could still get hurt.

The demon, its ferocity fully unleashed, met him head-on.

As the man and demon clashed again, their roles as attacker and defender began to shift.

Earlier, the demon's carelessness had allowed Gyomei to restrain its body, leaving it taking blow after blow with almost no way to counterattack effectively.

Now, at the cost of temporarily losing an arm, the demon had gained a brief measure of freedom. Although Gyomei's relentless attacks left it no opening to break away and kill anyone else, it could dodge his blows more effectively and inflict more wounds on him.

Gyomei was human, after all. In a battle of attrition, the demon was confident it could win.

As for running away? Why run now that victory was in sight? If it fled now, wouldn't all those beatings have been for nothing?

Besides, with Gyomei attacking so relentlessly, escaping wouldn't be easy anyway.

Seeing the situation take a turn for the worse, Kanzaki Kumo grew nervous too.

Even if he remembered Gyomei having enough strength to keep this demon pinned down until dawn, how could he rely entirely on memories of his previous life when his own life was at stake?

With his attention intensely focused, Kanzaki Kumo soon noticed something.

He could clearly follow both combatants' movements.

Both the demon and Gyomei had physical abilities far beyond an ordinary person's. Even a well-trained ordinary adult could move too quickly for a child of ten or so to follow, yet Kanzaki Kumo could clearly see every move they made.

He could even predict his target's next move from tiny movements and the tension in their muscles.

This went beyond anything that mere keen observation could explain.

After watching several exchanges between Gyomei and the demon, Kanzaki Kumo confirmed that he wasn't imagining things. In particular, his observations also confirmed his ability to predict his target's next move.

There was no time to examine or study this special ability in greater detail. Seeing the fight shift from its initial one-sided suppression toward an even match, Kanzaki Kumo began to move.

First, he found a suitably sized stone nearby. Then he waited for an opening. When the demon tried to trade injuries again, he threw the stone into the inside of its elbow, making its punch falter for an instant.

As a result, it took a solid hit from Gyomei that nearly smashed its entire shoulder apart, while Gyomei just managed to evade its own attack. It merely grazed the skin of his arm, leaving a wound that didn't even bleed.

That single disruption to its rhythm allowed Gyomei to suppress the demon again.

After that, Kanzaki Kumo intervened several more times, targeting the backs of its knees, the back of its head, its eyes, its wrists, and other places where even a light blow could affect its movements.

Once he ran out of suitable stones, he picked up the prayer beads Gyomei had scattered across the floor. They were just the right size for Kanzaki Kumo's hand. He didn't know what they were made of, but surprisingly, they weighed almost as much as the stones.

With Kanzaki Kumo's interference, the fight returned to Gyomei keeping the demon under control.

Just as Kanzaki Kumo was about to keep up his efforts, he suddenly noticed a few bold children trying to come closer and help.

Perhaps seeing Gyomei beat the demon senseless, while Kanzaki Kumo disrupted its movements simply by throwing things, had made them think the monster only looked frightening.

The illusion that "I could do that too," coupled with a child's desire to show off, made a few of the bolder children want to join in.

Kanzaki Kumo immediately ran back and held them back.

What a joke. Even he, who could see and even predict the demon's movements, could only interfere from the sidelines. These children, who had no skills at all, actually wanted to enter the fight. They would accomplish nothing except getting in Gyomei's way and replenishing the demon's energy.

They couldn't even throw stones to interfere with the demon, since they couldn't follow either combatant's movements. They might even hit Gyomei instead.

"Stay put!"

Kanzaki Kumo's stern command and fierce gaze quickly cowed the children who had overestimated themselves. Fortunately, Gyomei had already regained control of the fight and seized an opening to pin the demon to the ground and pummel it again.

This time, he pressed his entire body down on it, leaving it no chance to break free.

Every punch landed with tremendous force, making the ground tremble.

"Brother, I was wrong."

"Please spare me."

"I won't do it again."

"..."

Pinned down again, the demon lost its ferocity and began begging for mercy in every way it could.

But Gyomei ignored it and simply kept swinging his fists.

He still remembered that sunlight was needed to kill this monster, so all he could think about now was maintaining his assault until the sun rose.

As the sky outside gradually brightened, the demon stopped its futile pleading and resistance, though it continued to curse.

"You monster!"

"You blind bastard!"

"You'll die a horrible death!"

"I was just hungry and wanted something to eat! What did I do wrong?"

"It was another brat who led me here! He was the one who ruined that incense demons hate! Why won't you leave me alone?"

Standing nearby, Kanzaki Kumo listened to the demon cycle through the same few curses before trying to justify itself, and shook his head, rather speechless.

Clearly, this demon wasn't very educated. It couldn't even curse properly.

Demon: ?

More time passed, and the first ray of sunlight pierced the darkness, pronouncing the demon's death sentence.

But Gyomei couldn't see the sunlight, and he kept throwing punches. Kanzaki Kumo didn't dare tell him, either. What if the demon seized the chance as soon as Gyomei got up and took a few children down with it before dying?

No matter how unlikely that was, Kanzaki Kumo wasn't willing to gamble.

Because Gyomei had arrived in time, their battlefield was right beside the shattered doorway, and the direction the building faced meant sunlight would soon shine inside. Seeing that Gyomei still had strength to spare, Kanzaki Kumo completely abandoned the idea of saying anything.

And so Gyomei kept punching until sunlight streamed through the broken wooden door and fell on the demon beneath him. Only when that blue-faced, fanged figure dissolved in the sunlight did he finally stop.

Gyomei's fist froze in midair just as he was about to strike again. The monster's disappearance beneath him left him stunned for a moment.

"The sun is up. That monster has completely disappeared. Thank you for your hard work, Mr. Gyomei."

Seeing this, Kanzaki Kumo stepped forward and spoke, his voice carrying the relief of having survived a disaster.

In the original story, Gyomei had arrived a few seconds late, and some of the children had tried to help. In the end, only Gyomei and one little girl had survived inside this building.

By the time the authorities arrived, the demon had already disappeared. Terrified out of her wits, the little girl had only managed to point at the empty space beneath Gyomei before fainting.

As a result, Gyomei had been judged the murderer of those children and thrown into prison. This also left him unwilling to trust anyone afterward except the head of the Demon Slayer Corps, who rescued him from his cell.

Now, however, Kanzaki Kumo's presence had given Gyomei a chance to avoid imprisonment and had saved every child in the building, himself included.

However, as the demon began dissolving in the sunlight, Kanzaki Kumo's exceptional vision caught a figure flashing past outside the temple.