“Demonstrate?”
Urokodaki stared at the hand Shinsuke was holding out, and the corner of his mouth beneath the tengu mask may have twitched.
“You want to demonstrate a technique you just ‘figured out’?”
“That’s right!”
Shinsuke nodded, eyes bright and shining, and though his face still bore the red marks and sweat from the tug of war, his expression was unusually serious.
“Just watch, Master, you’ll see!
I guarantee it’ll surprise you!”
Urokodaki was silent for two seconds, studying the kid’s expression, which showed no sign of bluffing, then recalled that strange pink breathing aura from earlier.
He gave a cold snort and unclipped the short Nichirin Blade from his lower back, then held it out.
“It had better be real.” Urokodaki’s tone remained hard.
“If you dare waste my time, your training load triples when we get back.”
“No problem!” Shinsuke took the blade and snapped to his feet in one smooth motion, moving with a sharpness entirely unlike the shameless wretch who had been sprawled on the ground moments ago.
He weighed the short blade in his hand.
The blade was considerably shorter than a standard Nichirin Sword, better suited for concealment and a fast draw.
Though thinking about it, Urokodaki was a half-retired old man at this point, and walking around waving a full-length sword all day wasn’t really fitting.
But if he ever ran into a demon, he couldn’t very well stand by and do nothing.
So there was this blade, short enough to tuck against the lower back and keep hidden.
For Shinsuke, though, the length of the blade didn’t matter.
At least not for this particular technique.
“Watch carefully, Master!” Shinsuke turned with a grin, facing the Temple Demon’s head still pinned to the tree by the hatchet, the one that had grown two hands from its neck.
The Temple Demon’s head: “…” (You finally noticed me again!
But…
I have a very bad feeling about this.)
Tanjiro was still puffed up with indignation behind Nezuko, but even he found his gaze pulled toward Shinsuke’s stance.
He clenched his fists and stared without blinking.
Shinsuke drew a deep breath, not the crisp, spring-water clarity of Water Breathing, but something else, a deep inhale carrying a faint warmth and sweetness, tinged with something like longing.
From his mouth and nose, a pale pink current rose again, denser and more solid than before.
He raised the short blade flat in front of him and let his left hand drift lightly along the flat of the blade.
“Harem Breathing…”
At the murmured words, the pink current seemed to answer a call, flowing swiftly down from his mouth and nose and coiling up his right arm where it held the blade.
Then, like living vines, it crept up the hilt, across the guard, and finally wrapped the short blade entirely.
“First Form…”
The pink flames flickered and pulsed along the blade with a faint hum.
The blade, originally no longer than a forearm, was now encased in a thick layer of burning pink energy that kept pushing outward, condensing, taking shape…
In the blink of an eye, a massive energy blade composed entirely of pink flame, stretching over ten meters in length, appeared in Shinsuke’s hand.
Urokodaki: “?!!”
Tanjiro: “!??”
The giant blade’s outline retained the vague shape of a Nichirin Sword, and as Shinsuke slowly raised it, the pink radiance blazed against the night sky in a display that was brilliant, dazzling, and magnificent.
It cast its light over the terrified expression of the demon head beneath the tree, and over Shinsuke’s focused profile.
“No!
No no no!”
The demon head’s desperate screaming earned only a cold laugh.
“Too late.”
“First Form, Valor of the Heroine!”
The moment the shout landed, Shinsuke moved.
No elaborate footwork, no flashy combination strikes, just the simplest, most direct, most brutal blow imaginable, a single downward cleave.
The short blade clad in its massive pink energy giant crashed downward from above with the force of something that could split a mountain.
The first casualty was the tree the demon head was pinned to, which split apart from the crown downward with a crack.
The Temple Demon head shrieked, eyes rolling upward, straining to see what was coming from above.
But the next instant, the pink giant blade sliced without resistance through the center of the demon’s brow, down through the bridge of its nose, through its mouth…
“No!”
The Temple Demon managed only one short scream before being cleaved into two perfectly even halves, and crumbled to ash on its own.
Tanjiro’s hatchet, still wedged in the demon’s neck, was split cleanly in two as well and fell to the ground in pieces.
Yet the momentum of the giant blade did not diminish, and with a thunderous crack of splitting wood it came down and slammed into the earth as though cutting through tofu.
Boom!!
Dust billowed and grass flew in every direction.
That single strike had not only split the demon head and the tree it was pinned to, but had carried through to the large tree directly behind it, one that would have taken two people with arms outstretched to wrap around, and that tree too was cloven in two.
On the ground there was a savage gash several meters long and half a foot deep.
The edges of the gash were scorched a charred black as though burned by intense heat, and faint pink sparks drifted from them.
Crack…
boom.
The split tree slowly toppled outward in both halves, crashing to the ground with a heavy, resonant impact.
Silence.
A silence like death.
Sakonji Urokodaki stood motionless, his tengu mask aimed straight at the gash in the earth and the fallen trees, as still as a statue.
Beneath the mask, the corner of his left eye was twitching steadily.
What…
what kind of power was this?
As something of a master, Urokodaki knew very well what Shinsuke’s physical limits were, and the force contained in that single strike was something he absolutely should not have been capable of producing.
Which meant that the giant blade formed from that condensed pink flame had not only extended the reach of the attack, but more importantly, had generated a pure explosive force in an instant that went far beyond the body behind it.
The power in that strike far exceeded a typical Demon Slayer Corps member, and even, faintly, seemed to approach the level of a Hashira.
He stared at Shinsuke, who was still catching his breath, and his throat worked up and down, but not a single word came out.
This kid…
this foolish kid who, under his own instruction, hadn’t even found the doorstep of Water Breathing in eight months…
Had just been tackled by a little girl demon for a brief moment, and in that time had not only invented his own Breathing Style, but had actually invented a technique this devastating?
How was that possible?
What kind of Breathing Style produced that pink aura?
Could it be…
that he had actually been the one holding a genius back this whole time?
Had the kid been talented all along?
Tanjiro had gone completely blank.
His mouth hung open, his jaw nearly on the ground, and his crimson eyes were filled with nothing but “Who am I?
Where am I?
What did I just see?”
Could humans…
could humans actually do something like this?
A single strike that split a tree that thick?
And carved a gash that deep into the ground?
Was this really something a human could do?
Not a demon?
Not a god?
Even as his entire worldview reeled from the shock, Tanjiro found himself looking at the way that massive pink blade had come sweeping down, and felt, for some reason he couldn’t name, a strange flicker of familiarity.
A blade that grew enormous…
a single massive cleaving blow…
It overlapped, just slightly, with the image of his small and delicate sister suddenly growing larger and then kicking that demon head clean off with one savage kick.
Tanjiro snapped his head around to look at Nezuko, who was peeking out curiously from behind him at the scene, her small head tilted to one side.
Nezuko blinked her big pink eyes, looking at the gash in the ground, then looking at Shinsuke’s smug expression, and her little face showed what might have been, just faintly…
puzzlement.
“Ahem, ahem.”
Shinsuke forcibly smothered the elation roaring through him and coughed twice, letting the last wisps of pink energy dissipate from the short blade and returning it to its original state.
He turned around, his face slightly pale, carrying a smile he couldn’t quite hide.
“Well, Master?
I didn’t lie to you, did I?” He held the short blade back out to Urokodaki, who was still standing in a daze.
“That form of mine, Valor of the Heroine, it’s not bad, right?”
Shinsuke shamelessly claimed full credit for what the system had done.
Urokodaki took the blade back on reflex, and the faintly warm touch of the hilt brought him back to himself.
He looked down at the blade, then back up at Shinsuke, then at the gash and the fallen trees…
After a long silence, he squeezed a few words out from deep in his throat.
“…Passable.”
But anyone could hear the shock buried under that cold, hard tone.
This kid…
might truly be a monster.
‘Tch, you stubborn old man, so full of it you can’t even squeeze out one word of praise for me.’
Just as Shinsuke was pursing his lips and silently grumbling about this tsundere geezer…
The first pale light of dawn began to spread across the edge of the sky.
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