Chapter 300: Orochimaru: Muzan Kibutsuji, What Do You Think Life Is?
"Don't—don't kill me!"
Muzan Kibutsuji trembled all over.
Stripped of his Demon King facade,
he was once again the same cowardly creature from centuries ago—
the one who lay helpless on his deathbed, terrified of dying.
When faced with the threat of death,
he didn't hesitate to submit.
"I'm glad you understand your position,"
Orochimaru said coldly, "but I don't like the look in your eyes."
A non-human creature… with a gaze so humanly weak.
A being with a pure, naturally dark-attribute bloodline—yet so terrified of death?
Orochimaru could smell the fear radiating off of Muzan.
It was overwhelming.
Just like a newly graduated ninja,
about to step onto the battlefield for the first time, having never seen real death.
Was this what death-born creatures from other worlds were like?
So disappointing?
"My lord…"
Muzan cursed silently in his heart.
He couldn't understand—he had already submitted. Why was that not enough?
"Tell me everything about your world."
Orochimaru spoke as he twisted off one of Muzan's arms—
triggering a system recognition so he could stash it in his inventory once back in the real world.
Blood poured.
Muzan clenched his teeth and endured the pain, not daring to resist.
He began to reveal what he knew of the Demon Slayer world.
"Interesting… So you're the strongest being in your world?"
Orochimaru licked his chin with his long tongue, amused.
"A medicine to treat illness actually created demons like you? It can't be that simple."
Muzan didn't dare hide anything.
Because he'd realized—
While Orochimaru didn't possess the ability to read thoughts or memories like he did,
He could detect subtle changes in expression and emotion through necrotic energy feedback.
He could tell when someone was lying.
So Muzan had no choice but to confess everything—
his transformation into a demon and all that followed.
"The Blue Spider Lily… can it really let demons walk in sunlight?"
Orochimaru frowned in thought.
Without hesitation, he ripped off another one of Muzan's arms—
summoning a carrion hound and tossing it the severed limb.
After devouring the flesh, the undead dog visibly changed.
Its once-emaciated body began to grow fresh muscle.
Its four paws ignited with strands of dark-red hellfire.
Orochimaru's eyes lit up.
"Just from eating your arm, a low-tier carrion hound evolved into a hellhound?"
Carrion hounds—
The weakest undead creatures,
usually needing to consume vast amounts of dark-attribute materials to evolve into hellhounds.
Even then, evolved hellhounds had only minor fire attributes.
On their own, they were weak.
Only in large numbers could they pose a threat. But they were costly to raise in numbers.
Compared to other undead types, they were largely useless—
used by Orochimaru for scouting or as cannon fodder.
"As long as I can be of help…"
Muzan no longer displayed the arrogance he had shown back in Infinity Castle when talking to the Lower Moons.
He forced down his rage and played along.
Snap.
Expressionless, Orochimaru ripped off Muzan's freshly regenerated arm again.
This time, when fed to another carrion hound,
it produced no evolution.
The new limb, grown in-game, didn't contain the same essence.
Orochimaru's eyes glinted with excitement.
"The first arm came from your original body—brought from your world. It was full of dark energy. That's why it triggered the evolution."
"But this second one, regenerated inside the Reincarnation Game, lacks that same energy."
"I see."
He looked at Muzan like a curious, flawed specimen—
amused and analytical.
"I didn't expect a world this unusual. Fascinating."
From afar, Fang Yi, who had been tracking corruption source movements, now turned his gaze toward Grand Forest.
Orochimaru's research abilities…
Were unmatched in the entire ninja world.
Different from Tobirama Senju, who focused on ninjutsu,
Orochimaru's scientific knowledge—curse seals, gene splicing, cell engineering—cut straight to the essence of chakra and life itself.
Even in the pirate world, Vegapunk with his Brain-Brain Fruit might not match Orochimaru in sheer conceptual depth.
So—
A research-driven Orochimaru taking interest in Muzan Kibutsuji,
a "special creation of an entire world," made perfect sense.
"As I thought, I was right."
Orochimaru's gaze burned with passion.
He casually fed the rest of Muzan's limbs to his undead creatures.
As he suspected—
Muzan's original flesh was saturated with dark energy.
"Kibutsuji Muzan, was it?"
Orochimaru looked down at him and suddenly asked,
"What do you believe life is?"
Gasp.
Muzan trembled instinctively at the question.
He knew this question too well.
It had nearly been engraved in his cells—
the same question asked by the swordsman who almost ended him: Yoriichi Tsugikuni.
Even after nearly a thousand years,
he still felt a deep, soul-chilling fear at hearing those words.
He looked up—
His terrified eyes met Orochimaru's. For a moment, the image overlapped with that man's.
But then the feeling vanished.
Because—
Yoriichi's voice was filled with fury and righteous judgment.
But Orochimaru's—
Was cold and detached, as if life was nothing but a research subject.
To him—
Everything mattered. But also… nothing mattered.
People were like weeds, pearls, or gemstones—
Each with its own use.
Unlike Muzan, who saw others as disposable insects, convinced of his own superiority—
Orochimaru saw life as something with inherent value—
But only if placed in its proper role.
A mindset of absolute rationality, devoid of all excess emotion.
"…"
Muzan didn't answer.
This was the second time in his entire demonic existence that he had been asked what life meant.
It wasn't that he didn't want to answer—
He simply didn't know.
Born in the Heian period,
he had been under the shadow of death even in the womb.
His heart stopped before he was even born—he entered the world as a stillborn.
He survived through sheer will to live,
but was diagnosed with a fatal illness—he wouldn't live past twenty.
Then came the doctor,
who gave him a mysterious medicine that cured him—
And turned him into the Demon King, ruler of life and death.
But one flaw remained: he couldn't walk in the sun.
All he wanted was to fix that flaw—
To become the perfect lifeform.
"That seems to be true for most worlds."
Orochimaru looked at Muzan as one might examine a flawed product—
A creation with a defect.
He said mockingly:
"If not for the Reincarnation Game, the essence of life would just be fate's plaything. Its end predetermined from birth."
"You… Kibutsuji Muzan."
"The so-called Demon King of the Demon Slayer world?"
"The moment you killed that doctor, your death a thousand years later was sealed."
"It was all fate."
"The fact that you never became a perfect being meant you were always destined to be erased."
"That's why Yoriichi Tsugikuni existed."
"That's why you've never found a Blue Spider Lily—perhaps as common as roadside weeds."
"That's why, despite your immense power, you could never wipe out the pathetic Demon Slayer Corps."
"This… is the power of fate."
Orochimaru's raspy voice carried a strange magic.
And somehow—
The fear Muzan had felt, the terror triggered by memories of Yoriichi, began to fade.
His hatred for Orochimaru… also began to ease.
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