The Hand Demon’s deranged laughter broke off for a moment, and its countless arms swayed with it.
“Thirteen…
so what?
Little one, do you want to be the next?”
It taunted with a sneer.
“Don’t worry, I’ll savor you properly.
You smell really, truly delicious.”
Then its gaze dropped to Shinsuke’s hip, where the straight blade trembled faintly.
“And there’s a scent on you that feels strangely familiar.
Very faint…
but unmistakable.”
“It’s a taste…
I’ve had before~”
“Tch!”
Shinsuke moved.
No warning, no opening stance, he didn’t even draw his blade.
His figure vanished from where he stood like a ghost, and the next instant he was already less than five meters directly in front of the Hand Demon.
He moved so fast Tanjiro couldn’t even track how he got there.
The Hand Demon visibly froze too, its swinging arms stilling for just a beat.
Shinsuke raised his right hand and closed it around the hilt of Makomo’s blade at his hip.
“Shing!”
The blade left its scabbard with a clear, ringing cry, and it sounded less like a draw and more like a roar.
The violet-pink blade flared with an unearthly light in the dim forest.
The Hand Demon’s yellow eyes flew wide.
It felt it.
The hatred pouring off this blade.
“This…
this is…” the Hand Demon’s voice wavered with confusion.
Shinsuke gave it no time to think.
He shifted his weight slightly to one side and dropped into an opening stance Tanjiro had never seen before.
Blade angled toward the ground, center of gravity low, his whole body coiled like a leopard about to spring.
Or like a fox about to bare its teeth.
“Harem Breathing…”
Shinsuke said it quietly, his voice carrying nothing but cold.
“Second Form…”
His figure vanished again.
No, not vanished, it was movement pushed to its absolute limit.
But those blindingly fast footsteps landed without a single sound.
His path was no longer a straight line, but the darting, winding course of a fox slipping through a forest, leaving trails of pink afterimage behind him.
“Fox Walk!”
The moment the words landed, Shinsuke had already appeared to the right of the Hand Demon.
His blade flashed like a bolt of pink lightning, sweeping upward on a diagonal.
The target wasn’t the neck, wasn’t the head, but the thick cluster of arms swinging from the right side of the Hand Demon’s torso.
“Thwack!!!”
The dull impact of steel through flesh, and the Hand Demon’s startled howl of pain, exploded at the same time.
Four arms thicker than a grown man’s waist were severed clean at the root.
Blood erupted like a geyser, the severed limbs arcing through the air and crashing to the ground, where they twitched a few times before slowly crumbling to black ash.
“AHHHHH!!!”
The Hand Demon let out a shrill scream, its massive body lurching violently from the pain, its remaining arms clawing wildly toward where Shinsuke had been.
“How dare you!!!”
Then the Hand Demon froze.
To its right, Shinsuke was already gone, leaving only a fading pink afterimage in his place.
The next second, another flash of steel!
Somehow Shinsuke had looped from the right rear all the way around to the left front.
“You little wretch!
You little wretch!!!” The Hand Demon erupted into total fury through its agony.
It had long stopped caring how tempting the scent on Shinsuke was, because right now all it wanted was to swat this fly buzzing endlessly around it.
But Shinsuke had already vanished from the left side.
The Hand Demon roared and began regrowing its arms.
“Run all you want!
Let’s see how fast you really are!!!”
It stopped trying to aim and just swung every arm it had in every direction at once, like a man slapping blindly at flies.
Thick trees snapped apart easily, the ground was cratered again and again by the impacts, and dust billowed in every direction.
If it couldn’t see him, couldn’t find him, then hit everything.
The logic was simple, but it wasn’t wrong.
Tanjiro, forbidden from entering the fight, gripped his master’s blade so hard the hilt was slick with cold sweat.
But even the right strategy needs the strength to back it up.
Against the barrage of blows crashing down from every angle, Shinsuke moved like a fox that had truly come alive, weaving lightly through the gaps between arms every single time.
Every time he surfaced, a precise flash of steel followed, and another piece of the Hand Demon’s body came away.
Four arms from the left rear.
Three from the right shoulder blade.
Two from the lower back.
Then both primary arms on the left and right…
“AAAAAAHHH!!!”
The Hand Demon’s screams tore through the mountain forest, and underneath the fury there was now an unmistakable thread of fear.
“Get out here and face me!!!”
It had never faced an opponent like this.
No attacks to vital points, just the same motion repeated again and again, hacking away its limbs without end.
He was dismembering it piece by piece!!!
But Shinsuke paid no attention to the enraged howling.
When he surfaced again beside the Hand Demon, he switched to a horizontal slash.
But the target still wasn’t the neck.
It was the Hand Demon’s four legs, each one as thick as an adult human’s torso.
One!
Two!!
Three!!!
The speed at which all four of the Hand Demon’s legs were severed was something else entirely.
So fast that it didn’t even have time to lose its balance first, and when all four legs left its body to the sound of its own screaming, it came crashing down to the ground like a collapsing mountain of flesh.
“What…
what even are you?!”
The Hand Demon was completely unraveling now, regrowing arms and thrashing wildly as it shrieked.
“You’re not here for the selection, none of them had power like yours!”
Shinsuke paused briefly in a gap between exchanges, landing on a broken tree stump ten meters from the Hand Demon.
He was breathing harder now, but his eyes remained cold and flat as iron.
The violet-pink glow on Makomo’s blade burned brighter than before.
The grief had gone quiet, replaced entirely by something fierce and excited.
He looked down at the faintly trembling blade and said softly, in a voice only he could hear.
“Makomo, don’t rush.”
“This is only the beginning.”
He raised his head and looked at the Hand Demon’s face, twisted with rage and fear, and slowly let the corner of his mouth curl upward.
“You asked what I am?”
The mountain wind swept past Shinsuke’s hip, and the fox mask painted with small blue flowers lifted on the breeze, turning to face the Hand Demon.
“I’m just another one of Sakonji Urokodaki’s students.”
“That mask!” The Hand Demon’s eyes went wide.
Shinsuke didn’t give it the chance to finish its shock, dropping back into his stance.
“Harem Breathing, Second Form, Fox Walk!”
The pink afterimage appeared beside the Hand Demon again, going to work on the freshly regrown arms.
Kill it?
No rush.
Dying in one clean stroke would be letting it off far too easy.
If he let it die like that, how would Makomo’s pain, when her limbs were torn away, ever be answered?
Who would bear the weight of Sabito’s despair as he was devoured?
Who would understand the grief that hit Master Urokodaki every time news came that another student he had raised with his own hands was gone?
“You can regenerate, can’t you?
Keep going!
Don’t stop!!!”
Shinsuke’s shout and the sound of three more falling arms reached the Hand Demon at the same time.
“GAAHHH!!!”
“Didn’t you want to hold your brother’s hand?
Where are your hands?
Grow them back!!!”
The Hand Demon’s body slammed into the ground again as all four legs it had just regrown were cut away a second time.
“Let’s see just how many arms you can actually grow!!!”
The freshly grown arms flew through the air again.
The Hand Demon had become an enormous limbless trunk, rooted in place, screaming without end.
Arms grew back, were cut off.
Legs grew back, were severed.
Shinsuke circled him like a grinder, closing in, shredding, pulling back, repeating.
“Keep screaming!
Get more desperate!
Scream loud enough for Mt.
Sagiri to hear!!!”
Shinsuke’s face had twisted into something savage, wrapped in the pink flames blazing around him, looking less like a swordsman and more like a vengeful spirit.
He didn’t use any other technique.
Just this one.
Fox Walk.
Only this technique, the Fox Walk that Makomo had given him, could purge the hatred burning in his chest.
[Name: Urokodaki Makomo (Blade Spirit)]
[Combat Rating: D]
[Potential Rating: High (capable of triggering Third-Level Analysis)]
[Current Analysis Resolution: 90%]
[Stat Amplification: 30%]
[Constant Concentration Efficiency Amplification: 50%]
[Derived Technique: Harem Breathing, Second Form, Fox Walk]
This was Makomo’s status after entering the Soul-Nurturing Nichirin Blade.
Entry alone unlocked the Third Level.
Her amplification wasn’t as strong as Nezuko’s, but she was the only one capable of perfectly syncing with Shinsuke, drawing out his amplification at full efficiency.
Because she was right there in his hands.
And she would be the presence that stayed by Shinsuke’s side the longest of all.
Though because she had only just entered the blade, Makomo couldn’t yet communicate or manifest.
But when Shinsuke closed his hand around the hilt, that shared fury and hatred needed no words.
No words at all!!!
He had to return every ounce of that suffering to the Hand Demon a hundredfold.
“Harem Breathing, Second Form, Fox Walk, Rampage!”
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