"Ubuyashiki, my patience is at an end. I have no more time to watch this disgusting, sentimental play," Muzan hissed, his voice dropping to a deadly cold.
His claws and fangs began to extend unconsciously, a sign that his surging murderous intent was about to break its leash.
"I will give you one chance. Hand over the demon girl, and I will grant you and your Demon Slayer Corps a swift end."
But Kagaya Ubuyashiki paid him no mind.
He took a slow, rattling breath, the simple movement causing his frail body to shudder.
He raised a hand and gently, lovingly, stroked the hair of his two daughters.
When he looked up again to face Muzan, all the gentleness was gone, replaced by a divine, unwavering resolve—the calm of a man ready to walk into hell with his enemy.
"Kibutsuji Muzan," Kagaya's voice was low, yet it carried across the room with perfect clarity.
"You are cruel. You despise life and deny all emotion. You, an immortal creature, will never understand the brilliance of the humanity you so loathe—a brilliance as faint, yet as defiant, as a candle's flame. You can never possess it. Your only destination is the underworld."
That sentence was the spark that lit the fuse.
Muzan's pupils constricted.
All the teasing, all the mockery and contempt, vanished, replaced by the most primal, incandescent rage.
"YOU ARE BEGGING FOR DEATH!"
The destructive power he held in check was finally unleashed.
"No," Kagaya Ubuyashiki said, his voice impossibly calm.
"We die together."
And then, the world erupted in fire.
An apocalyptic heat surged from beneath the floorboards, which cracked and splintered as crimson flames roared to life.
In an instant, a blinding, incandescent light devoured everything, as if a tiny sun had been born within the manor.
A massive fireball of unimaginable heat and power expanded in a perfect, annihilating sphere.
The main house, built to stand for centuries, was vaporized in a fraction of a second.
The study, the books, the little birthday cake—all of it was annihilated by the extreme light and heat, leaving not even ash behind.
Then came the sound, a deafening, delayed roar that was less a noise and more a physical blow.
The entire Moriki Manor and the very ground for miles around, shook violently.
A devastating ring of fire and force, mixed with dirt, gravel, and the indescribable stench of incineration, swept outward from the epicenter, painting half the night sky a bloody, terrifying red.
This was the final gift Kagaya Ubuyashiki had prepared for Muzan.
Not a clever trap or a masterful sword technique, but the purest, most violent weapon of the modern age: a massive quantity of explosives, all of it laced with a concentrated wisteria poison.
Kagaya had turned his own home into a tomb, all for the one-in-a-million chance to die with his enemy.
The terrifying explosion lit up the night, visible for miles.
However—
Just before the destructive energy consumed everything, as Muzan was about to be engulfed by the white-hot light, a single, cold command cut through the roar.
"NAKIME!"
Clang—!
The sharp, resonant twang of a biwa string somehow pierced the deafening blast.
Beside Muzan, space distorted like the surface of a pond.
A simple wooden door, edged in blood-red, materialized out of thin air, the dark, eerie corridors of the Infinity Castle visible beyond it.
There was no shock or rage on Muzan's face.
Only an extreme, cold calm, and a hint of mocking anticipation.
He had been waiting for this.
"Ubuyashiki, I told you I knew all your pathetic tricks," his voice echoed in the final moments.
"Now, I wonder if you'll regret this, burning alone in your self-made hell!"
With supernatural speed, Muzan retreated into the spatial doorway.
Yet, as he looked back at the family about to be consumed by the inferno, he saw no panic.
Kagaya Ubuyashiki was gently holding the hands of his wife and daughters, and on his face was a serene, satisfied smile.
'This madman! He is an absolute idiot!' was Muzan's final thought as the door to the Infinity Castle vanished.
The next moment, the incandescent fireball engulfed the space, its power so immense it vaporized even the lingering phantom of Nakime's Blood Demon Art.
The shockwave continued to rage, carving a smoking, charred crater hundreds of feet wide where the main house once stood.
In the distance, the Wind Hashira Sanemi witnessed the pillar of fire shoot into the sky.
For a moment, his heart stopped beating.
Raw, agonizing grief contorted his scarred face.
"OYAKATA-SAMA!!!"
At the edge of the newly formed crater, the air rippled like water.
Muzan Kibutsuji stepped out, completely unscathed, his suit not even wrinkled.
His pale face held an expression of detached contempt for the Ubuyashiki clan's final, futile gesture.
"Foolish…" he began to say, ready to mock the still-burning pyre.
But his words were cut short.
"NAMU AMIDA BUTSU! MUZAN!!!"
A roar like that of an enraged guardian king, filled with an infinity of grief and violent murderous intent, exploded like thunder.
A figure as huge as a mountain, wreathed in smoke and flames, charged out of the inferno.
It was Gyomei Himejima, his sorrow and resolve now honed to a razor's edge.
Tears of pure, unadulterated rage streamed from his blind eyes.
In his hands, he swung his unique Nichirin weapon—a colossal spiked flail and a broad-axe, connected by a long chain.
He had imbued it with all his strength, all his grief, and all his will.
With a terrifying scream that tore through the air, the massive flail descended like a meteorite, aimed with absolute, unhesitating precision at the head of the Demon King.
"Hm?" Muzan's pupils contracted.
He had anticipated the trap and had easily avoided it.
But what he had underestimated—what he had simply disdained to calculate—was the sheer, desperate force of will a man could unleash after witnessing the sacrifice of his master.
Gyomei's selfless, all-or-nothing attack contained a speed and power that even Muzan had not expected.
Amidst a deafening CRASH, smoke and shockwaves exploded once more.
The final battle between mankind and demon had begun.
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