The cultivators of the Demon Slayer Corps were all retired swordsmen, many of whom were former Hashira-level veterans.
What kind of welcoming face these cultivators would put on for a demon was something Horne didn’t even need to guess.
Yet this was all well within his calculations; naturally, it couldn’t be helped.
There was, however, a notable exception: former Water Hashira and current cultivator, Sakonji Urokodaki.
Along with Tanjiro Kamado, who had been brought alongside him, and the slumbering Nezuko Kamado, who had already been turned into a demon.
Having Nezuko as an established precedent, Urokodaki was far less resistant to accepting Horne.
Furthermore, he possessed an extraordinarily sharp sense of smell that could detect how many humans a demon had devoured, yet from Horne, he couldn’t catch the slightest scent of human flesh.
“What you have consumed are demons, not humans, correct?”
Sakonji Urokodaki questioned him directly in front of the other cultivators.
“That’s right.
To grow stronger, I have preyed upon demons—the strongest being Lower Moon Five.
Moving forward, I will continue hunting down members of the Twelve Kizuki to feast upon.”
Hearing that Horne had already slaughtered and devoured Lower Moon Five, the expressions of the assembled cultivators shifted visibly.
“I believe that you have never eaten human flesh.
I will teach you Water Breathing.
But if you ever harm an innocent, I will take your head, even if it costs my dying breath.”
Urokodaki acknowledged Horne; teaching a demon human Breathing techniques was an unprecedented betrayal of tradition.
Yet just as he had with Tanjiro and Nezuko, he chose to place his faith in him.
With the former Water Hashira vouching for him, the other cultivators gradually agreed to extend a tentative hand of trust toward Horne.
Thus, training in the Breathing styles officially commenced in the world of Demon Slayer.
Having already built an ironclad foundation with Ripple Breathing, the speed at which Horne mastered the local Breathing techniques was terrifyingly rapid.
Most of his time was spent dueling the instructors in full-contact sparring to master the sword forms.
Urokodaki held a sharp Nichirin Blade while Horne wielded a wooden bokken, their intricate swordplay clashing in rapid succession.
Despite both combatants employing the exact same forms, Urokodaki’s steel could not graze Horne’s flesh.
As if possessing precognition of the elder’s attacks, Horne slipped, parried, and deflected every strike with surgical precision.
Conversely, Horne’s wooden blade ruthlessly exploited the faintest openings, striking true against Urokodaki’s body time and again.
Looking upon the youth before him, Sakonji Urokodaki felt a creeping dread take root in his chest.
He had seen countless prodigies in his life, but a talent of this monstrous caliber was entirely unprecedented.
(It is as if every single move I make has already been completely read and dissected…
And his rate of progression is absurd.
Three days ago, I could still pressure him, but in merely seventy-two hours, the gap forged by decades of breathing mastery and battle experience has been completely erased!
Now, I am the one being overwhelmed!!
He is an abomination!
An absolute monster that evolves at breakneck speed through high-intensity violence!!)
A monster—such was the definitive verdict this veteran cultivator bestowed upon Horne.
The sparring concluded; despite possessing peak Breathing conditioning and Hashira-tier fundamentals, age spared no man.
Even Urokodaki could not completely defy the toll of father time, finding it exhausting to sustain such grueling intensity over prolonged stretches.
The exact same humiliation played out across every single one of the other master cultivators.
Day and night without sleep, Horne sparred relentlessly against the instructors in rotation.
Everything they had honed across a lifetime was absorbed like a sponge, and what chilled them to the bone was that his capacity seemed bottomless.
“Horne, I have nothing left to teach you.
Whether Breathing techniques, sword forms, or combat instincts, you have already surpassed me.”
Urokodaki acknowledged Horne completely; brief though their time together had been, Horne’s monstrous talent and unyielding character commanded his absolute respect.
While the training in the Demon Slayer world reached its climax, matters in the JoJo universe were burning equally white-hot.
Because the cultivation across both dimensions ran simultaneously in parallel, the insights Horne acquired in the Demon Slayer world paid immediate dividends in the JoJo universe.
Likewise, the metaphysical principles mastered in the JoJo realm fed straight back into his swordsmanship in Demon Slayer.
Through this mutually reinforcing feedback loop, Horne’s combat potency multiplied exponentially.
At the onset, the blistering mental load of multithreading across two intense battlegrounds left him slightly flustered.
Yet as hours turned to days, he realized that so long as his conscious mind remained laser-focused on analyzing the adversary, everything else could be delegated to somatic instinct and primal intuition.
Honing his reflexes through the crucible of lethal combat, he let primal instinct guide his muscles to react autonomously.
Though he took a handful of blows early on, he rapidly slipped into a flow state.
His analytical intellect dedicated itself entirely to mapping the enemy’s every habit and frequency.
Toward incoming strikes, he felt only a vague, sensory whisper, yet he trusted that instinct to steer his body out of harm’s way.
The more Horne trusted this primal instinct, the sharper and more lucid the sensation became.
Until the opponent’s killing intent and attack vectors were mapped in crystalline clarity before him, without even needing to look with his physical eyes.
This profound neurological evolution reshaped both of his physical vessels simultaneously.
Lisa Lisa gazed at Horne in disbelief; merely a few days had passed since the commencement of their training, yet he had evolved to such an unfathomable degree.
He even frequently displayed exotic breathing cadences and martial forms she had never taught him.
(Is this creature truly human?)
Lisa Lisa could not help but wonder in silence.
“Your rate of evolution is staggering.
May I ask what secret lies behind it?”
She was genuinely burning with curiosity regarding the mechanism behind Horne’s miraculous progression.
“Secret?
I merely dedicate my entire consciousness to analyzing every breath and movement you make, Master Lisa Lisa.
“Then, I let raw instinct and intuition take the wheel, letting my body autonomously replicate and counter those actions.”
Horne’s explanation left Lisa Lisa completely stunned.
“That is literally the mythical realm of Ultra Instinct—the State of Selflessness!!”
She cried out, briefly shedding her composure—though one could hardly blame her for being rattled by the legendary pinnacle of martial arts manifesting in a young mortal.
Deceptively simple in theory, yet astronomically difficult in practice.
Human cognition, by its very nature, inevitably introduces latency and friction into physical movement.
To surrender the flesh completely to instinct, one had to achieve a state where conscious thought no longer burdened physiological execution.
Had Horne not possessed his anomalous multithreaded physiology, reaching this state with such ease would have been impossible.
Normal souls were locked in a one-to-one symbiosis with a single physical vessel.
Horne, however, governed multiple vessels through a singular unified will, decoupling conscious cognition from individual biological frames.
When his active focus anchored itself inside one vessel, the other was essentially running on somatic autopilot.
It was akin to handing the controls over to an advanced combat AI, which calculated optimal martial outcomes based on continuous data ingestion.
All his intellect needed to do was feed the database, and the body moved on its own to dismantle the opposition.
It was this exact anomaly that allowed him to effortlessly master what ordinary martial artists spent lifetimes failing to achieve.
Lisa Lisa’s assessment of Horne shifted from a once-in-a-millennium prodigy to an absolute, terrifying monster.
(If this continues, in a matter of days, he will eclipse me completely.
Yet…
perhaps this is how it was always meant to be.
Isn’t this the ultimate meaning of human existence?
To have a successor who surpasses the master—isn’t that what I have longed for all these years?
Yes, exactly.
When I think about it, I have lived for nearly a century.
Horne will soon take up the mantle from my hands.
When the time comes, I shall bequeath this life of mine unto him.
The vast reservoir of vital Ripple energy I have stored over these decades will surely grant him the decisive power he needs.)
Lisa Lisa began to truly understand the choice Baron Zeppeli had made all those years ago.
To encounter the perfect heir, entrust one’s life’s work into their hands, and even offer up one’s very life force to carry the legacy forward.