The mountain had been quiet for three days before the Corps moved on it — quiet in the specific, deliberate way that meant something large was waiting underground, patient enough to let its own silence do the hunting for it.
Nine Hashira stood at the tree line in the dark, and Tanjiro, standing among them with his blade already drawn, had never felt smaller in his life.
“Nest reports put the count near thirty,” Gyomei said, voice a low rumble beside him, prayer beads wrapped tight around one massive fist.
“Perhaps more.” “Thirty,” Tengen repeated, grinning wide enough to catch what little moonlight there was.
“Flashy.
I like it.” “You like everything that lets you make noise,” Sanemi muttered.
“I contain multitudes.” Shinobu’s smile didn’t waver, soft and pleasant and entirely unbothered by the number.
“I’ve prepared enough wisteria toxin for forty, just to be safe.
We wouldn’t want anyone going home empty-handed.” “We’re not killing them outright,” Muichiro reminded her, tone flat and half-distant as always.
“Not if we can help it.
Dead ones don’t sell.” “I’m aware.” Shinobu’s smile sharpened, just slightly.
“Mine simply sleep for a very long time first.” Mitsuri bounced once on her toes, already glowing with barely restrained energy.
“Okay but if one of them tries to eat somebody I’m still allowed to actually hit it, right?
Like, properly?” “Obviously,” Obanai said, low and even, his snake curling tighter around his shoulders in anticipation.
Kagaya’s instructions had been simple enough when the mission was first handed down — subdue where possible, kill only where necessary, and bring back whatever could still be carried.
It had sounded, at the time, almost reasonable.
It stopped sounding reasonable the moment the ground split open.
• • They came up out of the earth in a wave, dozens of them, limbs too long and mouths too wide, and the mountainside dissolved into chaos.
Tanjiro moved without thinking, Water Breathing carrying him low and sideways beneath a demon’s first strike, blade catching it across both legs in one clean pass — not deep enough to kill, deep enough to drop it screaming into the dirt, where Nichirin-threaded rope closed around it a half-second later, courtesy of Obanai’s snake darting past with the tie already looped.
“One,” Obanai called out, flat, already turning toward the next.
Beside him, Tengen’s twin blades caught the moonlight in a wide, deliberate arc, explosive charges detonating in perfect rhythm along a line of three demons at once, dropping all three without a single fatal cut between them.
“THREE, IN ONE MOVE,” Tengen bellowed, delighted with himself.
“That’s what flashy looks like, Sanemi!” “Shut up and tie your own knots,” Sanemi snapped, already dragging a fourth demon into submission with brutal, efficient violence, his wind-cutting strikes trimmed down to something just short of lethal — a restraint that clearly cost him more effort than the killing blow would have.
Mitsuri moved like water given muscle, flexible strikes wrapping around limbs and pinning joints, laughing brightly the whole time like the entire fight was the single best thing that had happened to her all week.
“Got one!
Got another one!
This is so much easier when you don’t have to actually finish them off—” Gyomei needed no cleverness at all.
He simply caught the largest demon mid-lunge with both hands, held it there against its own considerable strength with the patient, immovable calm of a mountain refusing to be argued with, and waited for someone to bring rope.
“Little help,” he said, entirely unhurried, as the demon shrieked and thrashed against a grip that never once loosened.
Shinobu’s targets simply folded, one after another, poisoned joints buckling gracefully beneath them, her expression never shifting from its usual soft, pleasant calm even as she stepped neatly over a collapsing demon twice her size.
“Sleep well,” she told each one, sweetly, like tucking in a child.
Muichiro drifted through the thickest press of them like mist finding the gaps between stones, blade work so economical it barely looked like effort, demon after demon dropping in his wake with clean, precise non-lethal cuts.
Tanjiro fought at the center of all of it, breath steady despite the chaos, Water Breathing carrying him from one restrained demon to the next, tying off wounds where he could, pulling punches where the old him never would have needed to.
Somewhere in the noise, a demon lunged for his throat and found only water where he’d been standing a half-second before.
By the time the mountainside went quiet again, the ground was littered with groaning, twitching, thoroughly subdued demons, and not a single pile of ash in sight.
“…Huh,” Tanjiro said, chest heaving, looking out over the wreckage.
“We actually did it.” “Course we did,” Sanemi said, wiping his blade off with visible disgust for the whole exercise.
“Doesn’t mean I liked it.” • • What followed was, by unanimous and entirely unspoken agreement, considerably less dignified than the fight itself.
“Sacks,” Tengen announced, producing an absurd quantity of burlap from somewhere none of them cared to ask about.
“Grab a demon, bag a demon.
Simple system.” “This one’s still moving,” Mitsuri said, wrestling a demon roughly her own size into a sack that was very clearly not built for the job, the whole bag lurching sideways with each muffled thrash from inside it.
“Is it supposed to still be moving?” “They’re not dead, Kanroji, they’re napping,” Shinobu said, cheerfully tying off her own considerably tidier sack.
“Napping demons move.
It’s fine.” “It is deeply unsettling.” “You get used to it.” Sanemi stood over his own catch with the particular scowl of a man doing math he resented.
“How much does one of these even go for?” “Maybe depends on rank,” Muichiro said, already crouched beside his, examining it with clinical detachment.
“Lower ones aren’t worth much.
This one feels mid-tier.
Maybe decent.” “Mid-tier,” Sanemi repeated.
“Great.
I nearly lost an arm for mid-tier.” “You didn’t nearly lose an arm.” “Felt like I might.” Gyomei, meanwhile, had simply picked up his considerably larger catch — sack and all — and slung it over one shoulder like a sack of rice, entirely unbothered by its continued, muffled struggling.
“This one felt strong,” he said, with quiet satisfaction.
“Should be worth a great deal.” “Show-off,” Tengen muttered, hefting his own three-demon haul with considerably more visible effort.
Obanai, tying off his final knot with brisk efficiency, glanced sideways at the growing pile of writhing sacks with something that might, on a more expressive man, have passed for grim satisfaction.
“The Corps’ funding problems,” he said, “may be solved by dinner.” “I still think this is deeply strange,” Tanjiro admitted, checking the knot on his own sack for the third time.
“Selling them.
Like they’re — I don’t know.
Cargo.” “They tried to eat a village full of children an hour ago,” Sanemi said flatly.
“Don’t waste your sympathy.” Tanjiro didn’t argue that, though something in his chest stayed uneasy about it regardless, all the way back down the mountain.
• • Kagaya received the full report the following morning, seated as he always was in the dim quiet of his chambers, expression calm and unreadable behind the darkness that never seemed to fully lift from around him.
“Thirty-one demons,” he said, once Tanjiro had finished.
“Alive.
That’s remarkable work, Tanjiro.
All of you.” “The Void City payout should cover the Corps for months,” Tanjiro said.
“Maybe longer, depending on what they’re actually worth.” Kagaya was quiet for a moment, considering that with the same patient thoroughness he considered everything.
“When you go to spend it,” he said finally, “there are a few things I’d ask you to prioritize.
Health Pills, as many as the shop allows — for the wounded we can’t always treat in time otherwise.
Whatever protective equipment they have that might survive a demon’s claws better than what we currently issue.” He paused, something almost wry touching the edge of his voice.
“And if there’s anything at all that might ease a long illness, without a cure attached to it — bring some back for me as well.
I won’t ask for a cure.
I’ve made my peace with that.
But easing it, even slightly, would be a mercy I’d accept gladly.” Tanjiro’s throat tightened at that, though he kept his voice steady.
“I’ll find something.
I promise.” “I know you will.” Kagaya’s smile was faint, but genuine.
“You always do.”