"You should be asking, 'How long are you going to keep walking?' Not 'we'... You're being carried, after all." Tetsu no Sosuke rolled his eyes. "Let's keep going. The Kasugai Crow has already sent word, so we should run into someone from the Hidden. We still don't know exactly what happened last night. Kibutsuji Muzan showing up in front of us at least means he got nothing elsewhere. What worries me, though..."
He frowned at that, but finally continued, "There's a demon named Nakime among Kibutsuji Muzan's subordinates. She specializes in a Blood Demon Art that manipulates space... If she'd appeared alongside Kibutsuji Muzan yesterday, holding out until dawn would have meant nothing. But she... didn't come."
It was a good thing she hadn't come.
As Shinobu Kocho thought that, she understood what Tetsu no Sosuke meant. "You mean she was somewhere else?"
"There aren't many people who can hold off an Upper Rank Demon..." Tetsu no Sosuke's expression grew grave. "I hope I'm just overthinking things."
"Mm..." Shinobu Kocho hummed softly. She, too, was trying hard to think, to keep her mind from falling idle.
Any lull could send her slipping into unconsciousness, and once she lost consciousness, there was no telling whether she could return.
She had plenty on her mind, too... and her thoughts were a tangled mess.
She thought about this "illness" of hers, about the brushes with death last night, about the battle she had witnessed, so frenzied it bordered on hysteria.
The man carrying her had won back her life through that berserk struggle, fighting like a madman without a thought for the cost.
And for that, his whole body was covered in wounds!
Just how great a strain did Extreme Flow Intent place on the body?
Others might not know, but Shinobu Kocho