Without waiting for a response, he plunged into the depths of the forest.
"Wait!" Tanjiro took half a second to react before bolting after him. Inosuke, who wasn't about to be outdone by anyone, followed without a second thought.
When they finally caught up to Marcus—or rather, when Marcus stopped—Tanjiro grabbed his arm anxiously. "Didn't you come here for a mission? Why the rush to—?"
Before he could finish, Marcus's hand landed on his shoulder and shoved him forward.
"Don't worry about it." He smiled over his shoulder. "First, deal with what's in front of you."
Stumbling a couple of steps, Tanjiro managed to regain his balance, but when he looked up, he froze like a statue.
Something was emerging from between the trees.
Slowly. Heavily. With each step, the ground trembled beneath its feet, and the lowest branches groaned as they were pushed aside.
It was a massive silhouette, vaguely human in shape, with skin of a sickly dark violet, crisscrossed by throbbing veins. Where the forearms should have been, the flesh ended in two sharp hooks that gleamed with a wet edge.
And where the head should have been... there was nothing.
A clean cut across the neck, covered by a scab. No eyes, no mouth, no face.
But somehow, that thing knew exactly where the four of them were.
"Uh..." Inosuke tilted his head, genuinely confused. "How's it moving if it doesn't have a head?"
"Simple." Marcus explained patiently. "Another demon cut its head off and hid it somewhere, leaving only the body running as a puppet. No head means you can't kill it by cutting the neck, and with no neck to cut, it has no weak point."
"YOU CAN DO THAT?!" Inosuke sounded genuinely offended that a demon was more creative than he was.
"He's right..." Tanjiro had stopped listening. He'd closed his eyes for a moment, sniffing the air, and when he opened them his expression had changed entirely.
"And there's more: I can smell threads coming out of its back, stretching deep into the forest... That demon is controlling it remotely."
But they didn't have time to say anything else.
The Headless Demon took a sharp step forward and raised both hooks above where its head should have been.
!
"WATCH OUT!" Tanjiro dropped into a fighting stance, hand on the hilt, knees bent.
"HAHA!" Inosuke, of course, had the exact opposite reaction. His eyes lit up and he clashed his blades together with excitement. "Doesn't matter if it has a head or not, this big bastard looks like a REAL fight!! The great Inosuke is gonna—!!"
Swish
A blur passed between them.
Neither Tanjiro nor Inosuke saw him move. They only felt the breeze as he went by, a gust of air that tousled their hair and ruffled their clothes, and when they blinked, Marcus was already on the other side of the giant.
He'd passed right beside it, inches from the hooks, without stopping and without even drawing his sword.
"I'm going to scout ahead!"
His voice reached them from far away already, drifting between the trees, fading fast. "You three, take care of this guy!"
Three?
Tanjiro stood there dazed for a moment.
He looked to his left. He looked to his right. Inosuke was there, ready to attack. And behind him... behind him there was only Nezuko, standing all alone in the middle of the path, blinking without understanding why suddenly no one was holding her hand anymore.
Marcus had left her behind... He'd let go of her hand and just taken off.
A vein bulged on Tanjiro's forehead. Then another. And then a third.
"MARCUUUUS!! DID YOU GO CHASING AFTER WOMEN AGAIN?!"
Because that's what it was! IT HAD TO BE!
He knew him too damn well, and the only reason that pervert would be capable of abandoning Nezuko was if he'd detected some new girl somewhere in the forest.
THERE WAS NO OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION!
But the rage didn't last more than a second. One look at the headless giant barreling toward them was enough to harden his expression instantly.
Gritting his teeth, he drew his blade and launched himself into the attack without a word.
"Soichiro! What are you doing?!" Inosuke stood there, outraged. "HE'S MINE!! I SAW HIM FIRST!!"
Without a word, Tanjiro just kept attacking with raw ferocity.
Nezuko. Makomo. Kanao. Tamayo. And now who knows who else.
Marcus… YOU'RE A SHAMELESS WOMANIZER!!
Every slash carried a name. Every thrust was a grievance piled up over time. Years. He'd spent years watching Marcus monopolize Nezuko, spoil her rotten, watching her smile at him first, watching her choose to go with him instead of staying with her own brother. HIS sister! HIS! Kamado Tanjiro's! The REAL brother! The one by BLOOD!
This time...!
This time, no matter what it took, he was putting an end to this!
For Nezuko! For his rights as the older brother! HE WOULD FIGHT!!
The kind, understanding, patient Tanjiro who had left home all that time ago... well. After years of living with Marcus, his personality had undergone certain adjustments.
And Marcus, already far away by now, naturally heard his furious scream too.
But he didn't give it a second thought. At this point, the number of times Tanjiro had cursed him out behind his back was so high he'd stopped counting.
His attention was elsewhere.
The forest opened up suddenly before him, the trees pulling back as if they didn't want to get close, and he stopped at the edge of a clearing bathed in moonlight.
There, sitting on a rock in the center, was a girl.
The first thing he registered was the white.
Everything about her was white: the kimono, which hung loosely off her shoulders with the collar stretched wide; the hair, long and fine as a silk veil, spilling over the stone; and her skin, so pale that under the moonlight it seemed to glow, as if she were made of the same stuff the night sky lent her.
Her body was pure Milf material—generous curves, plush, with that soft roundness she neither tried to hide nor play down. But her face... her face told a different story. It was small, delicate, childlike, looking no older than fifteen or sixteen. The contrast was jarring.
And right now, that little face was covered in terror.
Her crystalline green eyes trembled, watery, on the verge of tears.
"Wh-why...?" she whispered, shaking. "My puppet is still out there... H-how... how did you find me?"
Stepping out of the forest shadows, Marcus let his gaze travel over Spider Mom, and the corner of his lips curled wickedly.
[Female target detected!]
[Name: Spider Mom (Demon)]
[Strength Rating: Medium-High]
[Potential Rating: Medium-Low (can trigger up to Third Level analysis)]
[Current analysis percentage: 0.3%]
'Third level…'
He walked toward her. "I'm here... for you."
Spider Mom stumbled back in fright and threw her hands up between them. "D-Don't come any closer! I... my PUPPET IS REALLY STRONG! Any second now it's going to—!"
"You mean that ugly headless thing?" Marcus cut her off, his face scrunching with disgust. "Just looking at it kills my appetite."
He glanced over his shoulder toward the darkness of the forest, where Inosuke's manic laughter and the clash of metal could still be heard in the distance. "I told my little bro to play with that thing. So it doesn't get in the way..."
He turned back to her, licking his lips. "While the two of us are alone."
Spider Mom's eyes went wide.
'A-Alone?!'
Her heart lurched. That meant... it had to mean he wanted to kill her by himself.
'That's... that must be it…' Rui had said these Demon Slayers received rewards for killing them. So this man was planning to hog the reward all for himself.
'I HAVE TO RUN!'
Instinctively she tried to flee, but the moment her feet moved, she realized she couldn't.
Because behind the fear of this hunter was another fear. An older one.
Rui's eyes appeared in her mind—glacial, empty—and his voice echoed as if he were whispering right in her ear: "If you run, I'll kill you." Rui's hand squeezed her throat, and she swallowed the urge to bolt.
'I can't run…'
And when she saw Marcus take two more steps forward, she panicked. With one hand she kept controlling the puppet in the distance, and with the other she fumbled through the folds of her kimono and pulled out a fistful of spiders, hurling them at Marcus.
"Go! Go tie him down!"
The spiders' abdomens burst open in midair like tiny silk bombs, and from each one dozens of threads shot out toward Marcus, forming a massive net that crashed down on him like a white wave.
But he didn't even draw his sword. He just casually waved his right hand, wrapped in a pink mist, and tore a hole right through the net.
And with another sweep of his left hand, the remaining threads snapped clean and dropped to the ground.
!
Spider Mom choked back a whimper.
And without thinking, without stopping to process what she'd just seen, she pulled out another fistful of spiders. More this time. Far more. She flung them into the air and the entire clearing filled with threads, flying in every direction, blanketing everything like a white silk storm that left no room to dodge or even breathe.
Marcus sighed.
Swish…
His blade left the sheath.
And then, a single pink flash cut across the clearing like a blink.
Every thread was severed at the same time, drifting to the ground like freshly cut locks of hair. And the spiders, one by one, split in half and turned to ash before they ever touched the earth.
"..."
Spider Mom's hand hung frozen in the air, her expression utterly blank.
Her threads weren't as strong as Rui's, sure—but their hardness was on par with steel cables.
And this man… this man had just sliced through them like they were lint floating in the air.
'He... is he...?'
'...a Hashira?'
The word pierced her mind like an ice needle, and with it came the cold, absolute certainty that she could not win.
She plunged instantly into despair.
And Marcus kept walking toward her.
One step. Two steps. Three steps...
He walked very slowly, and each step landed on Spider Mom's chest like a heartbeat that wasn't hers, as if his feet were stepping directly on her heart.
In her eyes, Marcus with sword in hand was death itself. And these few steps were the final countdown of her life.
Her body began to tremble violently, as if she were about to shatter—and the more she trembled, the wider Marcus's smile grew.
It wasn't that he enjoyed the fear itself... He wasn't a sadist... Or at least that's what he liked to tell himself.
The thing was, he'd never seen a demon like this.
But this woman… this demon with a sinful body… voluptuous, with a face so delicate and tender it made you want to keep it close forever, capable of slaughtering slayers like someone crushing bugs yet trembling like this the moment someone got near her... The contrast was so absurd, so complete, that Marcus couldn't help but get excited!
He knew it wasn't right… But he didn't care!
"No, don't come any closer... P-Please..." Spider Mom's voice cracked with every syllable, edging toward tears. "I-I really… I really am going to…"
Going to what? Even she didn't know.
She couldn't do anything. Apart from controlling puppets, she had no other abilities whatsoever.
"Going to what?" Marcus was already three steps away from her, looking down at her with curiosity. "Use more threads? Or call back the headless thing?"
"..."
Spider Mom's lips trembled, unable to form a single word.
Marcus took another step forward.
This time his shadow fell over her like a curtain, covering her face, blocking out the moon.
Seeing that smiling face looming above her, Spider Mom hugged herself tight, and the tears began to fall.
_____
Thank you for reading! 🙏 Marcus has cornered the Spider Mother, but we all know his intentions are far from pure... 😏
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