Thirty li north of Demon Slayer Corps headquarters.
A campsite.
Or rather — what had once been a campsite.
Firelight stained half the sky a dull, burnt orange.
Seven or eight makeshift wooden shelters had mostly collapsed. Half-burned banners still hung from the broken crossbeams — banners painted with warped Buddha-images and esoteric symbols, their ink already blurred by tongues of flame.
Corpses lay scattered across the ground.
Not many. Five.
Two men, three women. The youngest looked no older than fifteen or sixteen — a girl lying faceup beside the crude altar at the camp's center, two neat rows of bite marks across her throat, her blood long since drained away, her face frozen at the very peak of terror.
Her hand still clutched a string of wooden prayer beads.
The beads were crudely made, nothing like a proper temple's ritual implement — more like something cobbled together by some fringe esoteric sect. What was carved into them wasn't orthodox Sanskrit, but a strange pattern mixing Buddhist and Shinto motifs.
Beside her lay a fallen banner, three words written across it — Tachikawa True Teaching.
The Tachikawa-ryū.
One of the most notorious heretical sects within Esoteric Buddhism, it preached "union of yin and yang" and "becoming Buddha in this very body," while in practice indulging in licentious rites and dark arts, deceiving ignorant peasants across the countryside.
The irony was that in an age of war, such so-called heretical cults often became the last lifeline for commoners driven to the brink.
This campsite had been one of the Tachikawa-ryū's strongholds.
But this one was different from the usual Tachikawa outpost — because a vengeful Demon had broken in.
A vengeful Demon, twisted out of what had once been human.
It crouched in the ruins of the largest shelter behind the altar, flecks of blood still clinging to its mouth, its ashen-gray skin gleaming with a sickly sheen in the firelight, its clouded eyes fixed on the torchlight approaching from the mountain path.
It let out a couple of rasping laughs.
Every bit of it dripping with contempt.
That was the attitude most vengeful Demons held toward the Demon Slayer Corps. That Demon-cutting organization suffered a frighteningly high casualty rate — in most cases, even when multiple swordsmen banded together in ambush, they'd still end up killed by a lone Demon instead.
Demons feared no ordinary wound. Even a Sun Blade, unless it struck the neck in a single instant, couldn't inflict a crippling blow.
And no matter how elite a swordsman, he was still only human.
Humans could be wounded. And wounded, they grew weaker.
Far too fragile!
"The Demon Slayer Corps again, huh!"
"Last time five of them came — three died, two fled. How many this time?"
But before it finished speaking—
a streak of crimson blade-light cut clean across its vision.
Carrying the heat of flame.
The dark teal-green Sun Blade took on a color it had never shown before, in that single strike—
A thin, orange-red glow flickered along the edge — not yokai fire, not spiritual power, but pure heat, wrung out in that instant of the swing by nothing more than human breath and will.
Flame.
Flame Breathing.
The Demon's head flew from its shoulders before it could even react.
The cut surface of its neck blackened, charring spreading inward from the wound — the Sun Blade's sunlight properties, catalyzed by that orange-red heat, burned through countless times faster than before.
The head began crumbling before it even hit the ground.
Crumbling into ash.
Scattering into the night wind.
Rengoku Jinjuro sheathed his blade, chest heaving, veins standing out on his forehead, sweat dripping from his chin.
His breathing came heavy — the brief exhaustion that follows the moment a Breathing Style state releases.
Flame Breathing.
He'd done it.
Only, unlike the Breath of the Sun, unlike Yoriichi's breathing — this was something he had wrung out with everything he had, over the span of a few days, from deep in his own bones, from palms that had gripped countless torches, from more than a decade spent tracking Demons through midnight forests.
It was a light that belonged to him alone.
"I did it…"
Jinjuro murmured, the hand gripping his blade still trembling faintly.
Behind him stood two young Demon Slayer Corps swordsmen — the same man and woman Yoriichi had subdued alongside him before.
But besides the two of them, there was one more figure present — one who had no business being on the front line.
Cho.
She wore the Demon Slayer Corps' black uniform, a white haori patterned in wisteria wrapped over it, her butterfly-patterned mask pushed up above her forehead, revealing a face flushed faintly red from a long, hard march.
A Sun Blade hung at her waist.
It was the one Kobe Hikaru had given her, from the batch he'd forged in the Swordsmith Village.
She had no business being here at all.
Kakushi members handled support, not the front line — that was an ironclad rule of the Demon Slayer Corps.
But during Kobe Hikaru's days at headquarters, this girl had, without question, become one of the "test subjects" — just like Rengoku Jinjuro — for spreading the Breathing Style, alongside Tsugikuni Yoriichi. Yoriichi took charge of teaching Jinjuro; Kobe Hikaru took charge of teaching her.
With the two of them as the starting point, the Breathing Style would spread through the entire Demon Slayer Corps.
In those few days, though she hadn't achieved the kind of breakthrough Jinjuro had — hadn't managed to actually perform a Breathing Style — she could still draw on it to raise her qi and accomplish things she'd never been able to do before.
Her swordsmanship talent wasn't bad at all; it was only her physical stamina that fell short.
That was why she'd never passed the trial.
The Breathing Style filled exactly that gap.
So she'd received Ubuyashiki's special permission to come to the front line as a Kakushi, an exception to the rules.
Meanwhile—
The burly man stared wide-eyed at Jinjuro's blade, mouth hanging open, unable to close it for a long moment.
The other female swordsman had her hand pressed to her own Sun Blade's hilt, forgetting to release it — her attention was locked on the charred cut Jinjuro's strike had left behind.
Cho's expression, by contrast, stayed calm — she had already seen something far more formidable than this.
"Captain — that cut just now…"
"Move out."
Jinjuro didn't respond to the praise.
He turned instead to the corpses in the ruins.
His footsteps grew heavier.
Even having mastered the Breathing Style, standing before a scene like this brought him no thrill at all — only a heavier, more urgent weight.
He walked over and crouched beside the dead girl.
Her hand still clutched that crude string of prayer beads.
Jinjuro gently pried her fingers open, drew the beads free, glanced at the warped pattern carved into them, sighed, and set them aside.
Then he closed her eyes.
These people had been drawn in by the Tachikawa-ryū's teachings, gathering here in this remote mountain camp to practice their so-called "true method." If it had ended there, they wouldn't have died. If that vengeful Demon hadn't broken in… In an age when human life counted for less than straw, survival was everything.
"Remember her."
He didn't turn around. His voice sank like a stone dropped into deep water.
"Every single person who dies because of a vengeful Demon — we have to remember them."
"And then, avenge them."
"With everything we have — cut out the source!"
…
On the mountain slope.
Moonlight and firelight mingled.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi stood high on the mountain path, looking down over the ruined cult campsite below.
His deep red eyes reflected the ruins and the corpses, reflected Jinjuro's crouched back beside the dead girl, reflected all those who'd been drawn in by the cult only to meet an innocent slaughter.
In an age of war, this was, in truth, the norm.
Chaos and bloodshed everywhere, human life worth less than straw.
But the existence of vengeful Demons still left Yoriichi unable to understand.
"Why?"
He spoke, his voice quiet.
"They were human once — I can see it. The human shape inside them is twisted, but it's still human."
"If they're the same as us, why do they eat people?"
This was, in truth, a question Yoriichi had wanted to ask for a while.
If the ones eating people were yokai, Yoriichi wouldn't have asked.
And if it were simply killing — killing out of one's own desire — he wouldn't have been confused, either.
This was an age of war; all such things were perfectly ordinary.
Yoriichi might step in to stop it, but he wasn't foolish enough to believe such things didn't exist in this world.
But what he saw now was different — Demons, once human, driven by some twisted will to eat people not out of desire, but out of compulsion, passively.
The purpose behind it eluded him.
As Yoriichi's words fell silent, a gray figure settled quietly against a tree trunk beside him.
A sedge hat hung at his back, pale long hair falling on either side, crimson demon-eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight.
Kobe Hikaru didn't answer right away.
He was looking down at the scene too.
But he saw a little more than Yoriichi did.
What the naked eye could see of Jinjuro's Flame Breathing — the searing waves and flame it gave off — wasn't some special effect or illusion, but genuine, literal fire.
This differed from the original Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, but it fit the way this blended world had evolved.
And with the soul-hunting archer transformation's soul-sense unfurled, he could also see the vengeful Demon Jinjuro had cut down — in that last instant before it crumbled to ash, a fragment of lingering soul flickering past.
Along with the briefest of sighs.
No fear of death, no anger, not even resentment.
Only a release, like a breath finally let out.
In the instant of its death, what that Demon had felt was simply — it's finally over.
"Because they never had a choice."
Kobe Hikaru said.
"Once Kibutsuji Muzan's blood enters a human body, it rewrites the host's will. Eating people isn't about growing stronger or weaker for them — it's hunger."
"Hunger without end."
"If they don't eat, they starve. If they do, they only grow hungrier. The stronger they get, the hungrier they become — it's not something willpower can fight, no more than a human can will himself into not needing to breathe."
Yoriichi said nothing.
But his brow furrowed tighter.
Kobe Hikaru straightened up from the tree trunk, his crimson demon-eyes fixed on Jinjuro's back, down at the foot of the mountain, closing the eyes of the dead.
"Do you know how the Demon Slayer Corps gets its swordsmen?"
Yoriichi turned to look at him.
Kobe Hikaru's voice was flat, as if stating the most ordinary fact in the world. "They're the ones who were left."
"Every single member of the Demon Slayer Corps, without exception, is someone whose family was killed by a vengeful Demon — and who survived."
"The year Jinjuro turned twelve, a Demon broke in and bit through his mother's throat. She died in front of him."
"If the Corps hadn't arrived in time, he'd have died too."
"They were only a step late."
Yoriichi fell silent.
"And the woman who came with him—"
Kobe Hikaru went on. "She was originally the daughter of a merchant family in the Western Lands. The winter she turned fourteen, a Demon broke down the door and ate six of her seven family members. She hid inside a rice jar, burying herself in rotten rice to mask her scent, and held out until Corps members arrived. That's how she escaped with her life."
"And that burly man — he's the son of a fisherman from the Tokaido. A Demon attacked their boat. Of the twelve people aboard, two survived. The other one went mad that same night and threw himself into the sea the next day."
Wind blew up from the valley, carrying the smell of scorched wood and blood.
All of this, Kobe Hikaru had learned over the past few days.
"Every member of the Corps is the same. They escape a Demon's hands by the skin of their teeth, get saved by the Corps, and join it in turn. After two years of training, they face a choice — join the Kakushi, or step onto the front line. And knowing full well how terrifying vengeful Demons are, they choose to face them anyway. Not just the Demons that stalk the world, but the demon inside their own hearts."
"The Demon Slayer Corps doesn't hold any lofty ideals."
Kobe Hikaru's demon-eyes lowered slightly. "They just want revenge. They just don't want the same thing happening to someone else."
"That's all there is to it."
Yoriichi stood on the mountain path, his deep red eyes unreadable in the moonlight.
But Kobe Hikaru noticed the hand resting on his Sun Blade's hilt had tightened.
That hand had never gripped so hard before.
Ever since the two of them had met, that hand had always rested lightly on the hilt, casual and unhurried — because Yoriichi's strength never needed force to begin with.
But now, he gripped it tight.
Because…
"I can see it."
Yoriichi finally spoke, his voice low.
"The people who become Demons still carry traces of humanity inside them. But even if it isn't by choice, they really are killing people."
"And their victims never chose it either."
He paused. "So they have to be cut down."
"Not out of hatred. Because there's no other way."
Mountain wind swept past, stirring the red hair over his forehead.
The flame-shaped birthmark glowed faintly in the moonlight.
"Master Hikaru."
"Mm."
"The Breathing Style… I've confirmed it works. So from here on, I'll teach it to more people."
He said it calmly.
But Kobe Hikaru caught it — the resolve underneath.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi had finally found his reason to draw the blade.
Not, as in the original course of things, kindled into a fire of vengeance by a family's death. Not summoned by any sense of duty to the Corps, either.
Only because he had seen—
someone suffering, and he happened to have the power to end that suffering.
Nor would he ever allow anyone to twist the meaning of life so grotesquely, ever again.
That was all there was to it.
Nothing more.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 10 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉