Seeing the two of them so calm, Muzan Kibutsuji's heart jolted.
That feeling…
A face surfaced in his mind, a man from long ago, the one who had driven him to the brink with a single strike.
How revolting. How cursed this sensation was!
Muzan's arms swelled violently as he forced his flesh to take Vincent Fox's punch head on. At the same time, he shot backward, retreating fast, while the tentacles behind him snapped forward like hunting spears, closing in from every direction to strike Vincent in the back.
Slash!
A pillar of fire flared into the sky. Tanjiro Kamado cut the tentacles clean off with one stroke, the severed ends sizzling and hissing.
Sun Breathing.
The sight only made Muzan angrier.
"Damn you, Tanjiro! Compared to him, you're nothing! Even he couldn't finish the job, and you think you can?"
Muzan roared, but the way the two fought together left him struggling to keep up.
It looked like…
He had to use that move.
Muzan hardened his resolve, and his body began to expand again.
In an instant, the diameter of his arm ballooned to two or three meters.
"No! He's going to blow himself apart again!"
Tanjiro shouted a warning the moment he saw it.
While Tanjiro had been unconscious, he had relived the conversation from centuries ago, when Muzan faced Yoriichi Tsugikuni.
Back then, under the Crimson Blade's damage, Muzan couldn't regenerate. When Yoriichi's sword was about to fall again, Muzan had forcibly swollen his body and detonated himself.
His flesh burst into more than eighteen hundred pieces. Yoriichi cut down fifteen hundred, but the rest still escaped, letting Muzan survive.
Now, Muzan's arm was swelling again, holding right at the edge, clearly preparing that same technique.
Tanjiro's blood ran cold. He surged forward, Nichirin blade raised, aiming to sever the swollen arm before it could detonate.
Sun Breathing bloomed in his hands. His swordwork was exquisite, sharp enough to split the night.
Brilliant Grace!
His body ignited in flame like a streaking meteor, weaving through the darkness in a blazing line.
Muzan panicked and immediately shifted his organs away from the incoming cut.
But the moment he moved them, the swollen mass shifted too, distorting and changing shape.
Vincent's eyes turned razor cold. With Ultra Instinct sharpening his perception to a knife edge, he found the opening and drove a punch straight in.
Boom!
A gaping hole ripped through Muzan's swollen flesh. Blood sprayed as the wound was punched clean through. Deep inside, something vital had been smashed into pulp, a heart shredded into red paste.
"Hit the swollen areas!" Vincent barked. "The important organs are inside!"
His fists rained down like a storm.
Muzan's body shattered again and again, flesh bursting outward.
Yet Muzan's regeneration was still terrifyingly fast. No one here could maintain Yoriichi's Crimson Blade state long enough to end him in a few strikes.
And then Muzan felt it.
Something was wrong.
"Why… can't I detonate?!"
His arm expanded to a certain point and then… refused to push further. The trigger would not start.
If he couldn't self destruct, that meant his last escape route was gone.
In that instant, a single name rose in his mind like poison.
Tamayo.
Muzan glared at the woman in his vision, teeth bared, face twisting.
"Tamayo! How much poison did you put in me?!"
"What did you do? Why can't my body detonate? What did you do?!"
Tamayo's eyes were calm.
"Besides the medicine that can turn you back into a human… there was more."
Then her expression turned sly, the cold satisfaction of a trap finally snapping shut.
"Don't be stupid. You don't really think I'd tell you, do you, Muzan Kibutsuji?"
"Why don't you think, properly, for once? Use that useless brain you multiplied just because you're afraid to die."
"If you don't force it to move now… you might not get another chance."
The moment she finished speaking, her body exploded into fragments and vanished from Muzan's mental world.
"Damn it!"
Muzan roared and slammed his fist down.
The ground cratered again.
Vincent and Tanjiro blurred aside, then lunged back in, attacks exploding in a relentless chain.
Tanjiro forced himself through pain that felt like his body was being ripped apart. He linked his forms together, one after another.
But his technique still wasn't refined enough.
More than once, a strike that should have been fatal was barely avoided, and Muzan countered with savage speed.
Luckily, Vincent was there.
He stepped in front of Tanjiro, caught Muzan's attack with one hand, and tore it apart with brute force.
Then he pressed forward, crushing Muzan's counter before it could form.
Muzan couldn't handle it.
His body swelled again. He was breathing hard now.
He widened his eyes, feeling his body.
This body, the Demon King's flesh, honed over a thousand years…
was reaching its limit.
And Tanjiro noticed something crucial.
Across Muzan's body, scars began to appear out of nowhere.
And under the Transparent World, Tanjiro saw those scars moving, sliding with the shifting organs inside.
That was it.
"These are the marks Yoriichi Tsugikuni left on him centuries ago!"
"Even after all this time, Muzan still couldn't erase Yoriichi's influence. Those old sword wounds are still eating away at him!"
"He must've been hiding them before. But now he doesn't have the strength to conceal his vital spots anymore."
"Muzan is dying!"
Tanjiro's voice rang across the entire square.
In an instant, the Demon Slayer Corps' momentum surged. Everyone felt it, like the first glimpse of sunrise breaking through the night.
Muzan heard it too.
It sounded like a death sentence.
"I… am dying?"
"No."
"You're the ones who are dying!"
Muzan erupted, squeezing the last drops of life from his cells. The area around him shattered under the force.
His arms, dozens of meters long now, whipped like demolition beams, punching holes clean through nearby buildings.
Suddenly, one massive arm shot straight toward Tanjiro, close enough to crush him in the next heartbeat.
"Thunder Breathing, First Form!"
"Thunderclap and Flash!"
Lightning sliced through the night.
Zenitsu cleaved into the arm, cutting it off more than halfway.
"Damn it! Without the Crimson Blade, all I can do is leave a cut. I can't cripple it!"
Zenitsu grit his teeth. Pain exploded through his right foot, so sharp his body started to spasm.
"Is it… going to break?"
He shifted his weight left and tested his right foot.
Not broken.
But barely holding.
One more Godspeed Thunderclap and Flash, and it would probably fracture.
He stared toward Tanjiro, praying he wouldn't die here.
Even if the arm wasn't fully severed, Muzan's attack speed dropped sharply.
Tanjiro finally had an opening.
He steadied himself, then swung his crimson Nichirin blade with everything he had.
"Hinokami Kagura!"
"Circular Dance!"
----------------------------------------------------
The deeper he goes, the more the truth unravels. Don't wait read ahead and witness Vincent's rise before the world catches up!
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