But it was precisely because of all that neither of them was willing to back down.
It had forcibly pushed Tanjiro’s training intensity up several levels.
Of course, Shinsuke hadn’t come away empty-handed either.
Setting aside the daily close contact with Nezuko that never let up for a moment, the Total Concentration Breathing Constant running at seventy percent enhanced efficiency was delivering enormous gains to his physical constitution.
(Shinsuke generally made his trap components beside Nezuko, only leaving for an hour or two when he went up the mountain to set them.)
But there was one unexpected gain that even Shinsuke himself hadn’t anticipated.
Concealment.
In order to torment as effectively as possible this obstacle standing between himself and Nezuko, Shinsuke had specifically asked Urokodaki to teach him his distinctive soundless footwork.
He had even gotten Urokodaki to request some fundamental shinobi movement techniques from the flashy Sound Hashira, Tengen.
There’s some truth to the saying that a person doing something wicked never tires and never finds it troublesome.
Not wrong at all.
Over the course of a year, Shinsuke’s trap-laying had reached a level of artistry, and his concealment skills and physical agility had grown by no small measure.
To counter Tanjiro’s unbeatable nose, he had even used Harem Breathing, which similarly relied heavily on the sense of smell, to develop an ability to suppress his own presence entirely.
To put it simply: in a dense forest or similarly complex environment, Shinsuke was a ghost.
Invisible, unhearable, and unsmellable.
Even Urokodaki himself had never anticipated this: he had handed the trap duties to Shinsuke originally just to have a bit of peace.
Instead he had inadvertently forged two remarkable specimens.
One had developed exceptional reaction speed and a near-supernatural ability to dodge.
The other was even more frightening.
Before, it was only Urokodaki himself who walked without sound, occasionally startling people.
Now Shinsuke had gotten to the point where he would materialize beside you out of nowhere like an apparition, at any moment and without warning.
It was only because the old man had no heart condition to speak of that he hadn’t been scared to death by this little wretch long ago.
And today, the time had finally come to bring everything to its conclusion.
After saying those words to Tanjiro, “I have nothing left to teach you,” Urokodaki led the two of them to stand before the massive boulder wrapped in knotted rope.
“Tanjiro, if you can cleave this boulder in two, I will allow you to participate in the Final Selection.”
Tanjiro stared blankly at the enormous rock before him, weighing dozens of tons, and his mind went blank.
This thing…
could be cut in two?
With a sword?
Without paying any mind to the dazed Tanjiro, Urokodaki turned and looked at Shinsuke.
“The Final Selection this year, do you want to participate?
If so, prepare yourself.”
Tanjiro was even more confused now.
“Master!
Urokodaki’s voice carried not a single ripple.
“Did you think this boulder is perfectly round because nature made it that way?”
Before Tanjiro had even processed what that meant, Shinsuke was already strolling over to him with a grin, patting him cheerfully on the back.
“My dim-witted junior disciple, your senior brother carved that round with his blade, stroke by stroke, so you had better appreciate it properly~”
Stroke…
by stroke…
he carved it…
ROUND?!
!!!∑(ﾟДﾟノ)ノ
Tanjiro looked at the perfectly spherical boulder, then looked at his senior brother Shinsuke, who wore the most harmless expression imaginable.
Both wide red eyes were unable to conceal the shock inside them.
He had always assumed his own progress was exceptional.
Master had frequently said that senior brother was a dimwit with less natural talent than him, and even though Tanjiro had started eight months later, he surely wasn’t that far behind, and at this point the senior brother’s traps could no longer even catch him off guard.
He had recorded that observation in his diary with a touch of private satisfaction.
He hadn’t…
hadn’t imagined…
His own test was to split this sphere.
And senior brother had already progressed to sculpting…
Shinsuke was very satisfied with the expression on Tanjiro’s face right now.
He understood perfectly well that this was Urokodaki tailoring the training to each student.
His own First Form, Valor of the Heroine, had raw force in abundance, pure brute power, and splitting a boulder was effortless.
The corresponding weakness was a lack of finesse.
So Urokodaki’s test for him had been to carve a boulder into a perfect sphere.
Tanjiro’s Water Breathing was precisely the opposite: water was endlessly adaptable and varied, but lacked sheer offensive force.
So his test was to split the boulder.
Shinsuke gave Tanjiro a pat on the head and turned back to Urokodaki.
“Master, I’ll skip this year’s Final Selection.
Next year, if Tanjiro manages to split the boulder, I’ll go with him, which will also give me a chance to look after him.”
“Who…
who needs you looking after them…” Tanjiro muttered with his head down, his words hard, but his heart…
warm.
Shinsuke’s words carried a meaning that ran deeper than the surface, and Tanjiro couldn’t quite read it, but Urokodaki understood it perfectly.
He gave Shinsuke a long, searching look, left behind a faintly dry “as you like,” and walked away with a certain bleakness to his step.
“Sh…
Senior Brother, what’s wrong with Master?” Tanjiro watched with confusion.
“I can smell a very strong scent of sorrow on him.”
Shinsuke glanced at Urokodaki’s desolate retreating figure, then turned and kicked Tanjiro in the backside without particular enthusiasm. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Get busy splitting your boulder, and if you fall behind and delay my Final Selection a year from now, I’ll split you instead.”
With that, Shinsuke turned and left as well.
Tanjiro: (▼ヘ▼#) “What is wrong with him!”
“If you didn’t want to say, fine, but why kick me!”
Rubbing his backside, Tanjiro drew his blade, and thinking about how Shinsuke had managed to carve this boulder into a sphere actually gave him a few extra points of confidence about splitting it himself.
No need to wait a year!
I’ll do it in a month, just watch!
He took a deep breath, raised the blade, and struck.
Clang!
~~~~~~
The boulder showed no reaction whatsoever, but the massive rebound traveled up through the blade, into his arms, his body, all the way down to the soles of his feet.
The impact jolted Tanjiro sharply, and a numbing pins-and-needles sensation spread through his entire body.
He stared blankly at his stinging palm.
“This…
there’s no way this can be split, can it…
Master wasn’t lying to me, was he…
How…
how did Senior Brother manage that?”
Paying no further attention to Tanjiro, who was in all likelihood about to spend a solid year fighting that wretched boulder, Shinsuke went down the mountain, stopped at the storage shed where his master lived alone to prepare a meal for him, then returned to the room he shared with Tanjiro and Nezuko.
He sat beside Nezuko, lifted her small head, settled it on his lap, closed his eyes, and began running his Breathing at full output.
Technically speaking, Breathing should be combined with physical training to achieve maximum effect.
But after a year of practical experience, Shinsuke had discovered that not only was training alone with his Breathing less effective than training his body beside Nezuko, even training his body near Nezuko was far less effective than simply sitting in direct contact with Nezuko while running his Breathing at full power.
With Nezuko resting in his arms, she could boost his efficiency by up to seventy percent.
That was far superior to any physical training regimen.
Of course, if he could hold Nezuko while doing physical training at the same time, that would be when his efficiency peaked.
But that would have to wait until Nezuko woke up properly.
He had no intention of using a sleeping Nezuko as a dumbbell.
When lunch was ready at noon, he brought the meal to his master, and Tanjiro smelled it and came down the mountain on his own.
Watching Nezuko pillowed on Shinsuke’s lap with his own eyes, he didn’t say anything.
Over the past year, Shinsuke had pushed past Tanjiro’s boundaries one time after another, and by now this level of closeness was no longer enough to trigger the sister-obsessed Tanjiro into a reaction.
After the two of them ate their fill, Shinsuke looked at Tanjiro mildly and said:
“Nezuko needs a bath~”
Tanjiro’s hand, in the middle of reaching for another bowl, froze in midair.