His long hair was tied into a high ponytail. A few loose bangs swayed in the wind, but they couldn't hide the blazing crimson flame mark at his temple…
As death approached, the "king" finally revealed himself—wearing the same hanafuda earrings as Roy, the same hair color, but a different red haori; a slimmer frame; and a pair of eyes that carried boundless compassion. Slowly, he surfaced from Kokushibō's dying "lantern show."
Sensing that peculiar rhythm of his soul, Roy sheathed his blade and bowed deeply.
"Teacher."
The man looked at him gently. His gaze flicked once to the hanafuda earring hanging from Roy's ear, then he reached out and helped Roy rise. He looked him over, clearly satisfied.
"You're truly wonderful," he said softly.
"Better than I ever imagined."
"It's all thanks to your guidance."
"I didn't teach you anything. This is your own effort."
"No." Roy straightened and let a soft current of nen gather in his palm, steadying Yoriichi's ghostly body as it threatened to fall apart. "Without you giving me a shoulder to stand on, I wouldn't have made it up here."
The Sun Breathing that had been giving him "+1 physique" each day wasn't a lie. Roy could admit it: even though this was his first time meeting Tsugikuni Yoriichi face-to-face, the link forged through the Demon Slayer Gate, through Sun Breathing, through every single day of relentless ten-thousand swings—all of it had silently built a bridge between them. A bridge that could only be called:
The truth of master and disciple.
In other words: I live, you have died—but across life and death, I've been your student for a long time.
Silence hung between them. Yoriichi felt the nen flowing from Roy's hand—warm and abundant—and smiled as he nodded.
"If Sumiyoshi knew his descendants produced someone like you… he would be so relieved."
"He wasn't nearly this outstanding back then."
Maybe he was old, even in death. Maybe he couldn't help the melancholy. Memories unfurled like scrolls—his mother, his father, the Demon Slayer Corps, his wife Uta, and the child who was eaten by a demon before it even reached a year…
Yoriichi slowly crouched down and picked up the flute he had once given Kokushibō. Looking at his brother's hideous state now, his eyes were filled with sorrow and a long, quiet sigh.
"Big brother… once you fell, you should've known this day would come."
"Yoriichi… Yoriichi…!" Kokushibō clung to him like he'd grabbed the last rope above an abyss, thrashing as he lunged forward and wrapped both arms around Yoriichi's leg. "Tell him—please, tell him! I don't want to die. I can't die yet!"
Tell who? That good child?
Yoriichi looked down at the monster at his feet, his back to Roy, and shook his head—slowly, firmly.
"He isn't your family. He has no obligation to carry you."
"And you… my dear big brother… should come with me now."
His leg trembled once—Kokushibō was knocked away. Yoriichi stood, raised the flute to his lips, and played a single song: of the world changing, of years flowing like dust, and of everything settling into stillness.
The melody became something calm—and slid straight into Roy's heart.
Roy froze.
Then the panel's alert chimed.
[Notice: An unfamiliar information stream has entered—analyzing…]
[Giver: Tsugikuni Yoriichi]
[Gift: A lifetime of sword-path insight]
[Received.]
[Swordsmanship +67415]
[Current Swordsmanship: LV4 (14172/100000) → LV4 (81857/100000)]
[One step from LV5.]
"Teacher…" Roy whispered when the song ended.
He opened his mouth as if to say more—but Yoriichi turned back and smiled at him, gentle enough to stop the words in Roy's throat.
His flame-red hair was even longer than Roy's. He looked at Roy deeply and said:
"I don't have anything else. This is all I can give you… a parting gift, from a teacher to a student."
He tipped his head up toward the night sky where the moon hung high, regret flickering in his voice.
"Shame this isn't daytime. I can't sit with you and speak of the sun's path."
"If I'm reborn someday… and we meet again… please don't forget there was once a fool like me—someone who disliked blades and only loved sunlight."
The dying lantern show faded. With Kokushibō's last breath gone, Yoriichi's "ghost body," rebuilt from memory, couldn't escape the law of life and death. Dragged by Kokushibō's resentment, he sank back into darkness.
The irony was cruel—this time it wasn't the younger brother guiding the older brother onward, but the older brother, out of hatred, hauling the younger into hell.
As Yoriichi's form thinned and vanished inside the nen shroud Roy had wrapped around him, right and wrong didn't seem to matter anymore.
With a soft puff, Kokushibō's head and body turned to black smoke. A wind blew—and they crumbled into ash, just like every other demon, ending a life of sin.
And then the panel updated:
[Life Energy +270]
The number lay there, quiet and bright in the status window, impossible to ignore.
Roy took a long breath. At the far end of the causal line, the coward who'd barely escaped froze for a split second—then sped up, fleeing even faster.
Roy pressed a hand to his chest and bowed toward where Yoriichi had dispersed.
"Teacher. Rest well."
He straightened, turned into light, and flashed—again, again, again—rapidly shortening the causal distance.
"Damn it…!"
"Why won't you stop chasing me?!"
Akaza was dead. Dōma was dead. Now… Michikatsu.
Kibutsuji Muzan, using Nakime's Infinity Castle and its trace of spatial power, ran like he'd been thrown back into the night he first met Yoriichi—moonlight and bamboo rustling, his flesh screaming to split, to self-destruct, to explode into two thousand eight hundred pieces…
When Roy's firefly-light drew within a hundred meters, Muzan shrieked.
"You forced me!"
With a bang, he detonated.
A rain of flesh exploded outward.
Only Nakime, clutching her biwa, remained—and Roy arrived a heartbeat later. One slash through her head, and she died on the spot.
[Life Energy +50]
The biwa chord snapped.
Nakime collapsed at Roy's feet. Her beloved instrument fell with a clack, two strings broken.
Flesh chunks scattered like storm rain, fleeing in all directions.
Roy killed Nakime—and then, strangely, he sheathed his blade and didn't chase the fragments at all.
One of Muzan's eyes hovered in terror, watching. It thought: Did I blow myself up too early? Did he lose me?
Then it met Roy's gaze—deep red, three black tomoe slowly spinning.
Muzan froze.
Roy looked like he was smiling—mocking.
"What are you laughing at?!"
"Coward."
Roy's Sharingan rose. Nen surged to his eyes. He folded his arms and watched Muzan's fragments flee, speaking calmly:
"Come out, kids."
A crow's cry rang out—caw!—as if a black bird flew high overhead and dropped a feather.
And then—
Muzan couldn't move.
Something had clamped down on every last piece of him: heart, kidneys, liver—nose, mouth, eyes—skin flakes, all of it. Nothing was spared. Every fragment was dragged back toward Roy.
Muzan screamed.
And finally he saw what had seized him:
Countless dead—fathers, mothers, children, wives, strangers, doctors, artists, shopkeepers, fellow travelers—faces beyond counting. Some Muzan remembered. Most he didn't. Many he'd never even looked at twice.
"All of you—let go! What are you doing?!"
Somewhere, a "clock" seemed to toll backward—like time reversing.
Muzan thrashed. He bit, he whipped bone tendrils, he tore at them—useless.
They didn't feel pain. They only clung to him harder, swarming, piling on, dragging every shred of him forward.
In an instant—
Muzan was reassembled whole, trembling in front of Roy.
The righteous have allies; the wicked stand alone.
Roy's eyes burned with grief and fury so intense it felt like annihilation.
He ignored Muzan and said softly:
"I always knew you killed a lot of people. Maybe dozens. Hundreds."
"I didn't expect thousands. Tens of thousands."
"You asked what I did to you?"
Roy stepped in and kicked—one heavy, brutal strike—shattering Muzan's knee. Muzan screamed and crashed to his knees.
"Then open your eyes and look."
"Look at what you did to them—to him, to her, to all of them!"
Heart-worm rose. Illusion layered over it. It tore into the darkness rooted inside Muzan. The panel began ticking:
[Negative Emotion +1 +1 +111…]
A long, relentless stream.
Muzan heard it—thin sobbing, like a thousand mouths crying at once. His scalp went numb.
He crawled like a beaten dog, geisha makeup smeared, and tried to bargain:
"Kamado Rōichirō… stop…"
"You don't want to die either, do you? Become a demon. Join me. You'll be immortal."
Immortal.
What a seductive word.
Roy laughed—cold enough to make Muzan's bones shake.
"Become that? I'd rather die."
Then Roy lifted a hand, indifferent.
"Eat."
Thousands of faces opened their mouths at once.
Teeth sank into Muzan's flesh.
He screamed so hard it felt like the world would choke.
Bones were crushed. Meat was torn. Blood was swallowed.
A hellish chorus of revenge.
"Eat him," Roy said, calm and merciless.
"I know once won't be enough."
"Then eat him a hundred times. A thousand. Ten thousand."
"Until you're satisfied."
Muzan vanished under the swarm.
Roy stepped out of the illusion and stood beside the trapped Muzan, silently watching the moon sink—counting.
One hour.
Two.
Three.
At last, when a pale band of dawn appeared, when sunrise broke the dark, Roy judged the number:
Three thousand seven hundred and some cycles.
He pinched the first thread of dawn between his fingers and breathed in.
"Beautiful."
Then smoke started rising from Muzan's head.
He began to burn.
Roy touched the hanafuda earrings and murmured:
"Teacher… I didn't let him go this time."
As the sun cleared the horizon, Roy stepped aside and let the light pour in—more space, more heat, more judgment.
Muzan burned through, down to ash, erased from the world.
Roy stretched lazily and walked away, not taking so much as a cloud with him.
[Life Energy +481]
And then the bestiary entry unfolded again, listing Muzan's talents—"Gift," "Dominion," "Multiple Organs," "Self-Splitting," "Whip Techniques," "Dead Infant Proliferation," and more.
~~~
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