Crash!!!
A red flash illuminated the quiet mountain road at night. The drunken Rengoku Shinjuro unconsciously unleashed Flame Breathing First Form: Unknowing Fire.
It wasn't actual flames. However, the friction heat created by the swordsman's extreme training, breath, and overwhelming fighting spirit planted a powerful hallucination of massive flames in the observer's mind.
Crack!
The sturdy steel hood of the Ford Model T that Akira was riding in was sliced in two as if cut by a blade.
Flame Breathing doesn't produce real fire, but the engine shattered by the physical slash, splattering oil and sparks, causing an explosion.
"Kyaa! This crazy old man! What do you think you're doing smashing the car!"
Oei, who was in the passenger seat, screamed and jumped out, but Akira was already gone from that spot.
His calf muscles abnormally swelled, and the energy of the great demon tengu, riding the wind in his blood vessels, resonated.
"Blood Demon Art: Tengu Soaring."
The power of Ushiwakamaru, the tengu technique she mastered. The blessing of Kiichi Hogen given to her, called the child of Kurama.
He flew through the sky for a moment, riding the wind like a tengu.
"Old man. The visual effects are awesome? I thought it was real fire. It's my first time seeing flames, is this how it feels?"
It was as if the chains of gravity had been severed. Akira's form lightly soared into the air, mocking the laws of physics.
Looking down at the shattered car fragments beneath his feet, he stepped lightly as if there were invisible stepping stones in the air, leaping and landing like a feather on the highest branch of a tree by the road.
"… Pretty fast, demon."
Shinjuro staggered and raised his head. His eyes were still clouded with drunkenness, but the killing intent within them was clear.
'Fast. Not the movement of a typical Lower Moon. Is it Upper Moon level?'
Even while drunk, he observed Akira's eyes. But there was no number, the mark of the Twelve Kizuki. His confusion soon turned into greater hostility.
He had never encountered an Upper Moon, but a sensation beyond a Lower Moon, unknown.
"I smell it. From you… the disgusting stench of a sewer is vibrating! I won't let you pass until I erase that filthy existence from before my eyes!"
Bang!
Shinjuro stomped the ground once more.
"Come down from there! I'll cut you to the bone!"
Flame Breathing Fourth Form: Blooming Flame Undulation
As he swung his nichirin sword widely, Akira's vision saw an illusion of a massive tidal wave of flames surging towards him.
Originally a technique for wide swings for defense, but depending on how it's used, it can also be a broad-range attack.
It wasn't actual fire burning the forest. But the destructive pressure created by the sword wind tore through all the branches as it surged. The fierce fighting spirit, as if his skin would be cut, felt like scorching heat.
Akira narrowed his eyes.
'It's not just flashy effects. The pressure of that slash… it's genuinely dangerous. If I just dodge, the car will become complete scrap.'
He raised the corner of his mouth and smiled bitterly.
"Alright. As you wish, old man, let's have a frontal showdown."
He jumped down from the breaking branch, extending his right hand forward and flicking his fingers lightly.
Above Akira's palm as he fell through the air, a blue mystical spell pattern bloomed.
"Blood Demon Art: Water God Mirror."
As Akira stretched out his hand, a small mirror, only the size of a hand mirror, was summoned above his palm. A small, ornate decorative mirror.
Clang!!!
The fierce, flaming slash Shinjuro launched collided with that small hand mirror.
The moment it tried to touch the mirror, a water blast swirled from the mirror, erasing the shape of the flames and blowing Shinjuro away.
Shinjuro rolled on the ground, taking a falling stance.
"Guh…! What is that? That bizarre Blood Demon Art!"
As his full-powered sword strike was blocked by just one hand mirror, and by water power at that, Shinjuro staggered in bewilderment.
Akira dispelled the mirror and landed lightly. His black suit was spotless, without a drop of water splashed on it.
"Hey, Flame Hashira old man."
Akira said in a calm voice.
"I acknowledge your swordsmanship is excellent. But isn't your mentality, your spirit, too weak? The tip of your sword is wavering with hesitation. That's why it doesn't reach."
Those words touched the last fuse that Rengoku Shinjuro was barely holding onto.
"You… what do you know!"
Shinjuro's face twisted hideously with anger, inferiority, and deep sorrow.
The despair of never reaching the feet of Yoriichi no matter how hard he tried, combined with the sorrow of losing his wife, had broken him like this.
"Die! Just die!"
Shinjuro regulated his breathing. As he blew an enormous amount of air into his lungs with his breath, his blood vessels bulged, and his entire body's muscles expanded beyond their limits.
It was the flame of life burned by a fallen Flame Hashira.
"Graaaah!!! Flame Breathing Fifth Form: Flame Tiger!!!"
As he kicked off the ground and charged, the sword wind and fighting spirit created the shape of a massive flaming tiger. To the observer's eyes, it looked as if a beast made of hellfire was rushing forward.
But the reality was more terrifying than that, a physical pressure that seemed capable of crushing bones.
Akira looked at the approaching mass of immense fighting spirit and clicked his tongue bitterly.
'Talent….'
From the perspective of Akira, a demon with no talent for Breathing, Shinjuro clearly overflowed with talent. Only because he compared himself to Yoriichi, who stood at the peak, he had gnawed away at himself, a pitiful person.
The fallen state of the one who should have led the Demon Slayer Corps as its senior member and a swordsman of legend felt truly regrettable.
The fierce momentum of the Flame Tiger rushed right up to Akira's nose, making his clothes flutter in that instant.
Akira's atmosphere changed as if it were a lie.
The light attitude was nowhere to be found, and an absolute silence that sent chills down the spine enveloped his body.
No weapon was needed. He straightened his right hand, taking the form of a sharp hand blade.
A bluish, ominous demon fighting spirit condensed at his fingertips.
"Blood Demon Art: Nameless Triple Thrust."
Stance extremely low. Gaze fixed unwaveringly on one point at the nape of Shinjuro's neck. A sensation as if the surrounding time had slowed.
Even the flame illusion Shinjuro had created seemed to have stopped.
Pat!
Akira's figure disappeared. No, he ran with a footwork technique surpassing the speed of sound. Piercing through the Flame Tiger's fighting spirit head-on, he instantly burrowed into Shinjuro's embrace.
Shinjuro's instincts screamed. The conditioned reflex born from decades of experience on the battlefield as a Hashira activated.
Seeing Akira's charging hand, he twisted his nichirin sword to take a perfect guard posture protecting his neck.
'Blocked!'
Even drunk, his defense was perfect. He thought that no matter how strong a demon's hand might be, it couldn't break a Hashira's nichirin sword blade.
But.
A bizarre tearing sound echoed. The hand Akira thrust was clearly one, but in reality, three thrusts existed simultaneously at the same place without time difference.
The moment the first thrust struck Shinjuro's nichirin sword blade, before the sword could even be pushed back by the impact, the second and third thrusts passed through the blade as if causing a contradiction in spacetime.
It was phenomenon saturation. A localized causality collapse phenomenon that ignored physical defense itself.
"...!!!"
Shinjuro's pupils contracted to the extreme, revealing the whites of his eyes.
The sharp tip of Akira's hand, which had pierced through while destroying the nichirin sword, stopped precisely 1mm in front of his neck, at the Adam's apple.
A cool sensation as if his skin would be cut. Cold sweat poured like rain from Shinjuro's entire body. The clear aura of death flowing from the fingernail tip held his life.
The Flame Tiger's fighting spirit that he had mustered all his strength to unleash dissipated futilely, sensing its owner's defeat.
"… Huh? Ah…"
Shinjuro's legs gave way, and he knelt down on the spot with a thud. The hand holding the sword trembled violently. It was a perfect, miserable defeat.
Akira released the thrusting stance and slowly approached him. Akira's shadow, backed by the headlight beams, covered the defeated Hashira.
"Kill me..."
Shinjuro muttered with his head buried in the ground. His voice was trembling pitifully.
"Anyway… it's a life with nothing to protect, no pride left. A Hashira defeated by a demon, what's the point of living? Cut my neck now."
But Akira's answer was much colder than he expected.
"I won't kill you. Seeing a human, a Hashira, reduced to such a pathetic, ugly sight, drowning in alcohol after losing his wife."
At Akira's direct insult, Shinjuro raised his head sharply. His face flushed red with humiliation.
"What, did you say?"
Akira looked down at him with cold red eyes and spat out.
"I'll let you live. Out of pity."
"...!"
"Seeing you fallen to the bottom like that, I've lost all desire to kill. Just live like that. Rolling around with a liquor barrel. That suits you perfectly. That, more than death, will be more miserable."
Akira turned away as if without regret. Shinjuro trembled with the humiliation of being pitied by a demon.
But the real reason Akira didn't cut him lay hidden behind those cold words.
A bitter light flickered in Akira's eyes as he turned his back.
'No matter how degraded a human may be, to his children, he is a precious father. He's not particularly evil, and having lost my own parents, I know what that pain is like.'
He too had a time of despair when he lost his parents the day he became a demon. A time when he tried to commit suicide, shouting Muzan's name in desperation.
He couldn't take away the last father from the siblings who had lost their mother to illness.
Even if it's a broken father, it's better than having none. That was the twisted but only mercy Akira could offer.
"Let's go, Oei. Draw and repair it. It'll work as a temporary fix, right?"
"Already repaired it. Drew it in a hurry, though. So, you're not killing him?"
"Just bothersome. Blood would splatter on my clothes."
Akira got into the car that Hokusai had hastily repaired by drawing over it and started the engine.
Vroom~ sputter sputter.
With the engine sound, the car began moving again with difficulty.
Rengoku Shinjuro, left alone in the darkness, stared blankly at the receding car.
Beside him, the broken nichirin sword he had dropped lay scattered desolately.
His fist clutched the dirt ground. A complex mix of humiliation, anger, and the relief of having survived stabbed at his chest.
The fallen flame was not extinguished. Only, a very slight… ember remained that might ignite in a different direction.
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