Tamayo…
Tamayo.
Muzan loathed that name beyond measure, that unfathomable woman.
She had betrayed him, allied with weak humans to scheme against him, and plunged him into the abyss of death.
An unforgivable traitor.
And he Ieiri Yuuki had also betrayed himself, aligning with that despicable person.
The falsehood, the deceit, the betrayal of the person before him everything made him look so utterly absurd.
The ink snake, a Curse invisible to ordinary humans or perhaps describing it as a python would be more fitting
Had grown to a width several times thicker than what two grown men could span with their arms intertwined.
He carried the person deep into the mountains, rolling and thrashing frantically and violently through the terrain.
Having transformed into his Special Grade Curse form, his body remained massive and formidable.
In just a fleeting instant, all the surrounding trees were snapped in half, with shattered rocks flying in all directions.
Boom, boom, boom—!
At this moment, the earth fractured and the heavens collapsed, the roaring impact deafening.
If any sorcerer were present here, they would undoubtedly witness that ink python wildly constricting and rolling about.
Just looking at it was enough to make one’s entire body go numb with dread.
Yet at this very moment, no one could stop this wave of fury steeped in tyrannical rage.
“Who gave you permission to toy with me!” A low, gloomy voice rang out.
Clearly a tone of exquisite pleasantness, yet it was enough to make anyone who heard it break out in goosebumps.
“You actually dared—”
Before the words fully faded, boom!
The ink-jade python’s body moved so fast it left an afterimage, and a figure was hurled out.
With a heavy thud, the body slammed mercilessly against a hard mountain boulder.
Almost instantly, all signs of life were extinguished.
Death.
In a single breath, the scattered blood seemed guided as it flowed back into the person’s body.
Flesh, bones, and skin all grew back anew.
The livestream feed at this moment was positioned at a tricky angle, preventing the violence from being too graphically jarring.
Then the camera shifted, zooming in on the blonde youth’s lower face.
The viewers finally saw it clearly
Ieiri Yuuki, he was smiling.
The curve at the corner of his lips was simply too obvious and clear.
So much so that the viewers lingering in the livestream room couldn’t even manage to convince themselves they had seen it wrong.
[…………]
[Madman!]
[My hair is already standing on end; Yuuki did that on purpose]
[From the moment of the text message interface, he definitely made sure Muzan saw it intentionally]
[Yet the Trash Boss is also going completely insane]
[Still, I don’t understand what good it does for him to deliberately send Muzan on a rampage]
[Even if he’s immortal, there’s no need to march straight to his death like this, right?!]
A madman.
Kibutsuji Muzan was a madman too.
Yet he differed slightly from Ieiri Yuuki.
His exterior was glamorous, but his interior had long since rotted through entirely.
Endless malicious thoughts and desires had transformed into his flesh and blood, continuously eroding his brain and sanity.
Greed, conceit, unrepentance, stubbornness to the core…
This was the foundational hue of Kibutsuji Muzan’s soul.
Even if he plunged into hell, even if he lived his life over again, he would never change, never turn back.
In the grip of blinding fury, every action he took was brutally extreme.
Accompanied by his surging, uncontainable, practically overflowing monstrous hostility.
The next instant, Ieiri Yuuki’s field of vision was battered by a massive flurry of static, blurring his sight momentarily.
A freezing chill washed over him, a tight grip seized his neck, and his breathing was wrested from his control.
Every minute movement was effortlessly suppressed by the other, and the hand around his neck suddenly exerted crushing force.
Compressing Ieiri Yuuki’s windpipe, breathing began to grow laborious and difficult.
It was unknown how much time passed until the static before the youth’s eyes gradually dissipated and his vision recovered.
Ieiri Yuuki opened his eyes only to crash straight into a pair of crimson eyes laden with chilling viciousness.
Muzan had reverted to his true form.
The appearance of a human.
His exterior remained gorgeous, though prominent, menacing veins throbbed at his temples.
In his mouth were stark-white, razor-sharp fangs, and behind him, a spiked whip revealed a ferocious, menacing aspect.
He was a non-human monster.
And likewise, a gorgeous monster.
This was the first time Ieiri Yuuki had witnessed Muzan in such a state.
Amidst the intensifying sense of suffocation, the blonde youth called out softly in a bizarre yet intimate tone:
“……Muzan.”
It was the exact same call Kibutsuji Muzan had grown so familiar with.
Aside from the shikigami master’s voice sounding somewhat hoarser, it was virtually indistinguishable from usual.
Don’t call me that.
The words weren’t spoken aloud, but the spiked whip extending from behind the gloomy, dangerous Curse had already thrust out brutally
An uninvited guest forced its way into the blonde youth’s previously unvisited throat.
The spiked whip scraped forcefully across his upper palate, tearing the inner lining as spreading blood stained the air.
Forced to open his mouth.
Every inch was tainted with a foreign scent.
The interloper’s presence overwhelmingly occupied this territory, pinning his lips and tongue down, cutting off any possibility of him uttering a sound.
There seemed to be an illusion
The gorgeous Curse before him had shed his gorgeous skin, mutating into a beast driven entirely by instinct.
The next instant, the layered clouds were parted, and the scorching sun hanging high in the sky was left unobstructed.
The sunlight turned burning hot, falling upon him.
Though he was no longer vulnerable enough to be scorched by sunlight at this point, he still felt an instinctive aversion to the warm, bright rays scattering down.
His gaze deepened.
Abruptly, his left arm bloated into a monstrous, fleshy limb, darting forward at blinding speed.
The razor-sharp fangs at its tip bit mercilessly into the youth’s neck.
Following that, he dragged his prey into a pitch-black mountain cave halfway up the slope to indulge himself wantonly.
Muzan’s menu should have been identical to Sukuna’s, equivalent to cannibalism among kindred.
Yet Muzan had reincarnated as a Curse, making his own kind on the menu become Curses.
He shouldn’t have had an appetite for humans.
Yet, the shikigami master…
Had always been an exception.
The Special Grade Curse was caught in the grip of extreme fury, frantically using his teeth to capture and pierce.
The cave was silent, yet not silent at all.
Every subtle sound was magnified infinitely here, inevitably making one’s heart skip a beat.
“……Muzan, do you remember? You back then.”
Reborn anew, the blonde youth smiled softly as he extended his fingertips.
His fair fingertips brushed against the back of the other’s black, slightly wavy hair ends.
“Think back to the old you, looking so disheveled, frantic, and embarrassed.”
“You knew you weren’t weak, yet you died once at the hands of those people.”
“How utterly pathetic.”
“Bang——!”
Instantly, the Special Grade Curse’s vicious spiked whip lashed out, piercing straight through the blonde youth’s restless palm.
Nailing that hand directly to the stone wall.
Kibutsuji Muzan lifted his head, blood having dyed his lips crimson.
A pale face, scarlet lips, and a thick scent diffusing between the two of them.
Those rose-red eyes burned with raging fire.
He was furious.
Furious that someone else had witnessed that pathetic side of him.
And even more abhorrent of the shikigami master mocking him so ruthlessly over the fact that he had been defeated by that group of Demon Slayers.
How dare he?!
Granted, the shikigami master was immortal, but Kibutsuji Muzan never resigned himself to fate.
He would definitely use every means possible to make the other taste regret!
Ieiri Yuuki exerted a slight force, ripping his palm free from the imprisonment of that “weapon.”
Muzan’s gaze surfaced with mockery.
He awaited the shikigami master’s futile counterattack.
Yet the reality turned out otherwise.
The blonde youth stretched out both arms, and following his movement, hooked them around Muzan’s neck.
The golden wolf-tail at the ends of his hair swayed in the air.
“…”
Muzan froze.
The human body that had abruptly and unexpectedly crashed into his embrace was warm.
Even as a Curse, he could perceive this with absolute clarity.
Following that, the other’s soft chuckle drilled into his ear.
An exceptionally pleasant vocal timbre, a gentle tone, as though infused with vitality.
Like the tip of a feather brushing against Muzan’s ear canal over and over again, slowly teasing.
“But, so what?”
He said: “The past is already the past.”
“Muzan—”
He called out intimately.
“I am ‘immortal,’ and you, my shikigami. This time, unless I wish it, Muzan will likewise exist for eternity.”
“So have no fear, Muzan.”
“Because death is no longer our destination.”
The youth released the other and backed away slightly, meeting the gaze of the Curse he had summoned.
Then he cupped the cheeks of this pale and gorgeous, tyrannical yet cowardly man, his eyes dark.
Ieiri Yuuki smiled, the curve growing wider and wider as he spoke: “Now, it is the future between you and me.”
Within the narrow, gloomy cave, their distance was extremely close, and in this posture, even their breathing seemed to intertwine.
Muzan felt as though he had returned to hell once more, yet this time, he had someone walking the path alongside him.