Eat? Thanks! (Continued)

Tetsu no Sosuke watched the little rascal offer him something as though it were a treasure. He took it and asked, "Where's my sword?"

"Brother Sosuke! The Village Chief wants you to repair this Nichirin Blade!"

Kotetsu spoke at the top of his lungs.

"What Nichirin Blade? I'm asking about my sword... My sword... Wait, what? This is a Nichirin Blade?"

Tetsu no Sosuke looked down at the sword in his hand again, his eyes lighting up.

He drew the blade, only for half of it to come out.

The other half was still in the sheath. He tipped it out, and the broken blade hit the ground with a clear ring.

He looked back at Kotetsu. "A Nichirin Blade?"

Kotetsu nodded!

Holding the broken blade, Tetsu no Sosuke gave it a quick glance and spotted words engraved on it: Slay Demons!

"One of the Nine Pillars' swords?"

Tetsu no Sosuke was even more surprised. In the Demon Slayer Corps, only a Pillar's sword bore that inscription.

Since when did repairing a Pillar's sword fall to a swordsmith who wasn't even qualified to forge a Nichirin Blade yet?

He turned to question Kotetsu again, but the boy had already run far away.

Kotetsu was still waving at him. "You can do it, Brother Sosuke! If you repair that sword, you'll be allowed to forge Nichirin Blades on your own. Then you'll be a real swordsmith!"

With that, he dashed off and vanished.

"...Was that kid the Day Wandering God in a past life? How the hell does he run so fast?"

At a loss for words, Tetsu no Sosuke picked up the blade from the ground. Just looking at its two broken pieces filled him with a strange sorrow.

"...This sword is crying."

He examined the sword carefully from end to end. "The blade's badly damaged. It's snapped clean in two, and parts of the edge have curled. It must have struck something incredibly hard to cut through in battle. A demon's neck? The wear is severe, too. It's seen a lot of fighting. I suppose that's what you'd expect from a Pillar. But if the sword ended up like this, what happened to the swordsman who used it? Hmm... It's very light. If Nichirin Blades are made to suit their wielders, could its owner be a woman?"

He muttered on, unaware that he had deduced so much from the sword alone.

Once he had finished inspecting it, he worked out a plan for the repair.

"The curled edge needs to be reforged, then ground back into shape. The damaged sections need reforging too, with repeated tempering and quenching to reshape the whole blade. But the break... If I can't put it back into the furnace as one piece, it'll always be a flaw in an otherwise beautiful sword. Wait, I remember a plant on the mountain whose sap can fix that. Coat the break with its sap, wrap the whole thing in clay, then put it in the furnace... What was that plant called?"

He tapped his head, set the sword on the anvil, and rushed inside to search through the notes his parents had left behind.

Before long, he found the plant mentioned on one of the pages.

"Ironstem Grass... Does anything that strange exist in the real world?"

Tetsu no Sosuke shook his head. Every forging technique he knew came from the original Tetsu no Sosuke's memories.

This was another world, after all. Plenty of things here differed from the world he had known before.

There was no point worrying about whether it made sense. If the method was recorded in the notes, it must work.

He made his preparations, packed some food and essential weapons and tools, then headed up the mountain to look for Ironstem Grass.