As the shouting died down, Himejima Gyomei, who had already been awakened by the children’s commotion, immediately rushed toward the building where they were being housed.
Blind from birth, he had developed his senses of hearing and touch to an extraordinary degree through his innate talent, even being able to identify people by their aura; on ordinary days, if one ignored his eyes which showed only the whites, it was impossible to tell him apart from a normal person.
This was also why the head priest and the other monks felt at ease leaving him to look after the children.
At the same time, as the last wisp of smoke from the demon-repelling incense inside the room dissipated, Kanzaki Kumo followed up with a shout: “Sayo, Hanaka, come back!
Don’t go near the door!”
Before he could finish his sentence, the two little girls closest to the wooden door only had time to slightly turn their heads; before they could even move their bodies, the wooden door instantly shattered into flying fragments.
The two little girls’ small bodies were immediately blown back, and several wooden splinters nearly as thick as a baby’s forearm pierced through their arms and thighs.
“Ah~ I didn’t expect that brat to actually be able to destroy that incense burner the demons hate so much.” The demon stood outside the house, a cruel grin appearing on its face as it watched the children inside, who had scrambled into the corners and were huddled together, trembling in fear.
It was only then that Kanzaki Kumo saw the demon’s appearance clearly.
The phrase ‘green-faced and long-fanged’ was not an exaggeration at all when applied to it.
Green skin, a red carrot-like horn growing from each temple, and a face wearing a cruel grin that looked even more terrifying in the dim environment; the mouthful of sharp teeth revealed by its smirk and the foul, bloody stench exhaled from its mouth further signaled that the opponent was not human, but a man-eating demon.
Just as the demon prepared to step into the house, a noise from the side caught its attention.
“Monster!
Don’t you dare hurt the children!”
…
When Gyoumei reached the outside of the children’s quarters, he could sense an extremely filthy and malicious figure that had just casually smashed the wooden door of the house; the cries of over a dozen children, filled with extreme unease and panic, reached Gyoumei’s ears.
“Monster!
Don’t you dare hurt the children!” Realizing the children were in danger, Gyoumei stomped his foot violently, his nearly two-meter-tall frame shooting through a cloud of dust toward the demon that was about to step inside.
The demon barely had time to turn its head before it saw a fist, almost as large as its own head, approaching the tip of its nose.
In the next instant, its vision tumbled rapidly as it flew further and further away from the wooden house.
Desperate to save them, Gyoumei’s full-power punch had directly sent the head of this creature, which had only recently become a demon, flying off.
Even Gyoumei himself was stunned for a moment; he had always known his strength and physique were abnormal, and he usually restrained his power as much as possible when interacting with others, to the point that he had no concept of the intensity of his own full-strength blow.
Kanzaki Kumo was also dazed by the sight; from the memories of his past life he had just regained, he knew the future Gyoumei would be strong, but the current Gyoumei was not yet twenty, and the temple’s food was only enough to keep one from starving to death.
In other words, Gyoumei had been in a state of long-term malnutrition for years.
Even so, with a single full-power strike, he could knock the head off a demon whose physical strength was clearly superior to that of an average adult.
One could only say that he truly lived up to being the one who would later use a flail to cosplay as an attack helicopter; this strength was truly immense.
But conventional means cannot kill a demon, and that headless body could still move.
“Mr.
Himejima, watch your back!”
Kanzaki Kumo’s shout brought Gyoumei back to his senses; the sound of wind breaking behind him was almost against his skin, and he could only roll forward to dodge the attack.
However, he was a step too slow after all; although the demon had temporarily lost its vision because its head was knocked off, Gyoumei’s tall stature became a disadvantage at this moment, and the demon’s attack still left a wound on Gyoumei’s back.
Though not deep, it had already drawn blood.
The pain in his back made Gyoumei let out a muffled groan, and he quickly stood up to face the headless, self-moving demon.
Clearly a humanoid monster in his perception, it could still move normally after its head was knocked off, and its claws were incredibly sharp; even a slight graze could draw blood.
Furthermore, if his senses weren’t wrong, the monster’s head was regrowing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Little did he know that the demon was even more surprised; a human could knock its head off with one punch.
For a split second, it almost couldn’t tell who the real demon was.
“This kind of monster cannot be killed by such means; it requires sunlight.
For now, we must find a way to restrict its movements.” Just as the man and the demon were both temporarily frozen by their mutual surprise, Kanzaki Kumo’s voice rang out again.
“Brat!”
The demon, which had already regrown its mouth, immediately let out a threatening low growl at Kanzaki Kumo.
It naturally knew what its fatal weakness was, but it hadn’t expected a child here to know as well; information regarding demons didn’t circulate among the common folk, after all.
Hadn’t that guy, whose destructive power was more demonic than a demon’s, been stunned by its ability to survive decapitation?
But the demon’s purpose here was to eat, not to fight people; therefore, while regenerating its head, it tried to find a way to bypass Gyoumei and snatch a few children.
Gyoumei’s punch just now had already made it give up on the idea of a direct confrontation; the only reason it dared to keep standing here instead of turning and running was simply relying on its hard-to-kill nature.
But it couldn’t stay too long; although it was only midnight and several hours away from dawn, it knew there was an organization in this world called the Demon Slayer Corps specifically dedicated to dealing with demons like itself.
The Demon Slayer Corps possessed nichirin blades that could kill demons without the sun; for a demon like it that hadn’t been one for long, the threat of the Demon Slayer Corps was immense.
While the demon was still trying to use its brain, Gyoumei had already taken action after receiving Kanzaki Kumo’s reminder.
How could one restrict a monster that wouldn’t die even if its head was knocked off?
A normal person’s thought would be to find strong enough ropes or iron cages to trap it, but Gyoumei was no ordinary person.
Thus, his method was—to break the monster’s limbs, torso, and head over and over again until the sun rose.
*Thump!*
*Crack*
“Damn human—”
“Ah—!”
“I’ll kill you!!”
“I—”
*Thud!*
Accompanied by a series of muffled impacts and the demon’s curses, Gyoumei began his unique method of movement restriction.
The absolute difference in strength caused the demon to be ravaged like a punching bag under his hands; its limbs were broken as soon as they recovered, and its head was knocked off as soon as it grew back.
Gyoumei’s terrifying force even caused the ground where he and the demon were to sink slightly, forming a small pit, and the prayer beads he usually wore on his wrist had long since scattered across the floor.
Seeing this, Kanzaki Kumo stopped the children who were trying to go up and ‘help’ while approaching the two injured girls.
A brief observation revealed that although the injuries were serious, fortunately, the wooden splinters that had pierced their arms and thighs had not hit any major arteries; they were not life-threatening for the time being.
Because he didn’t understand medicine, Kanzaki Kumo didn’t dare to move the two girls recklessly to avoid secondary injury, and could only shift his attention back to where Gyoumei was.
Although Gyoumei crushed the demon in terms of strength, after being beaten several times, the opponent’s bestial nature and madness were triggered; relying on its powerful self-healing ability, it directly traded injuries with Gyoumei, and for a moment, it actually showed a tendency to break free from Gyoumei’s suppression.