"Ahhh! There's a monster! A demon!!!"
The nearby swordsmith was terrified out of his mind. His scream ripped through the night, shattering the silence of the Swordsmith Village.
In just a few minutes, countless porcelain pots of all shapes and sizes appeared throughout the village.
Hundreds of bizarre, fish-like demons crawled out, attacking anyone they saw.
Houses were overturned, and cries of panic and desperation echoed everywhere.
The Blood Demon Art of Upper Rank Five, Gyokko, had begun its massacre.
...
Meanwhile, in a high-end guest room halfway up the mountain...
Tanjiro had just finished a full day of intense training and lay on the tatami, his entire body aching as he rested.
"Give it back, you boar-headed idiot! I saw it first!"
"Shut up, crybaby! The strong eat first!"
Zenitsu and Inosuke were still brawling over a piece of steak.
"Ahh! You can eat it! This god of the mountain has to go and water the dried leaves!" Inosuke suddenly put on his mask and ran towards the woods.
"Hey! Go to the toilets! Not the woods! Ug! At least wash your hands before coming! Zenitsu shouted in cringe.
Tanjiro was just about to say something when faint footsteps approached from the corridor outside.
His nose twitched sharply.
The scent hit him like a physical blow—cold, rotten, metallic, layered with something far worse: the unmistakable reek of an Upper Rank demon.
"Something's wrong! This scent…" Tanjiro's face drained of color. He shot upright and snatched the Nichirin Blade resting beside his pillow, heart hammering. "Everyone—get ready!"
The sliding shoji door creaked open slowly, almost timidly.
A hunched, emaciated old man knelt just beyond the threshold. His thinning gray hair hung in greasy strands over a face streaked with tears and snot.
Two grotesque tumors bulged grotesquely from his forehead like rotten fruit. His whole body shook as though he were freezing.
"S-so scary… don't bully this old man… please don't bully me…"
He crawled forward onto the tatami, sobbing pathetically, dragging himself closer with trembling hands.
Yet within those cloudy, weeping eyes, the kanji for "Upper Rank" and "Four" glowed with cruel clarity.
"He? An Upper Rank demon?!" Tanjiro's hair stood on end. His instincts screamed danger—how had something this powerful slipped so close without him sensing it until the very last second?
"Don't be fooled!"
A sharp crack split the ceiling above.
Mist Hashira Tokito Muichiro dropped like a streak of pale lightning, having lain in wait on the roof beams. His Nichirin Blade trailed a ghostly veil of mist as he descended.
"Mist Breathing, Fourth Form: Shifting Flow Slash!"
The blade drew a cold, flowing arc straight across the old man's neck.
There was almost no resistance. The grotesque head—tumors and all—tumbled free with a dull, wet thud, rolling to a stop near Zenitsu's feet.
"Did he… get him?" Tanjiro stared, wide-eyed, hardly daring to believe it had been that clean.
But this was no ordinary demon.
Neither the severed head nor the collapsing body disintegrated into ash. Instead, both writhed violently, flesh bubbling and twisting like molten wax. In seconds, two entirely new figures rose from the grotesque mass.
One gripped a jagged monk's staff, face twisted in perpetual rage, the word "Wrath" burning in his eyes.
The other lazily fanned himself with an enormous iron fan, lips curled in a frivolous, mocking smile, the word "Pleasure" carved into his gaze.
The emotion clones of Upper Rank Four—Sekido and Karaku.
"How infuriating! You cut off this old man's head the moment you arrived!" Sekido bellowed, slamming his staff into the floor with enough force to splinter the tatami.
Boom!
A thick, golden bolt of lightning exploded from the staff's base, twisting and roaring like a maddened thunder dragon as it hurtled straight toward Tanjiro and Zenitsu.
"Thunder Breathing—!" Zenitsu yelped, fingers fumbling for his sword hilt, but the attack was blindingly fast.
At the same instant, Karaku threw his head back and laughed delightedly.
"Kehehe~~ Blow away, blow away! This is truly delightful!"
He swung the massive fan in a wide, lazy arc.
A apocalyptic gale erupted—strong enough to rip the entire roof clean off the building.
Muichiro, still mid-landing, was caught completely off-guard. The wind slammed into him like a wall, hurling the Mist Hashira through the paper wall and sending him tumbling deep into the dark forest beyond.
"Muichiro-san!" Tanjiro shouted in horror.
The golden lightning surged forward, mere inches from swallowing Tanjiro and Zenitsu whole—
Clang—!
A piercing, crystalline ring sliced through the chaos.
In that same heartbeat, a blinding streak of purple-black lightning tore through the wooden door like a living spear.
A dark afterimage flashed across the room and met the incoming golden thunder head-on.
Zzzzzzt—!!!
Two opposing forces of lightning collided in a violent explosion of sparks and raw power.
But the golden thunder, fierce as it was, met something far superior. It shattered, dispersed, and vanished entirely, as though a mere imitation had dared challenge the true sovereign of storms.
Purple arcs illuminated every corner of the ruined room in stark, electric light.
Rin stood between Tanjiro and the demons, Kusanagi sword held steady in one hand.
His black haori fluttered slightly from the residual wind. He hadn't even bothered to activate his Sharingan—his pitch-black eyes alone were cold enough to freeze blood.
He stared straight at Sekido, who had frozen mid-swing, staff still crackling futilely.
"Swinging around a broken stick and calling it lightning…" Rin's voice was calm, almost bored. "You've got some nerve."
He flicked his wrist. The Kusanagi sword spun once in his grip with a low, menacing hum that made the air itself vibrate.
"Trying to use lightning in front of me… you've really picked the wrong opponent."
Sekido's rage flared hotter, veins bulging across his furious face.
"Where did this brat come from?! You dare stand in this old man's way?! Burn to ash!"
He raised the staff again, pouring every ounce of his Blood Demon Art into one final, devastating bolt.
But Rin gave him no opening.
Bang!
The tatami beneath Rin's feet exploded into fine powder. His body simply vanished—no afterimage, no blur, nothing.
Sekido's vision swam. A razor-sharp killing intent locked onto his throat like invisible chains.
"Too slow."
The whisper came from directly beside his ear.
Rin had already reappeared in front of him. No hand seals. No complicated technique. Just a simple, brutally efficient fist—dense Chidori lightning screaming and compressing around his knuckles in a blinding corona of purple-white.
He drove the punch forward.
Boom!
Sekido didn't even get his staff up in time. His enraged snarl froze as Rin's lightning-charged fist smashed square into his face with bone-shattering force.
A sickening crack echoed.
Sekido was launched backward like a cannonball. He smashed through wall after wall, splintering wood and sending debris flying, before slamming into the sheer cliff face outside with enough impact to embed his body several feet deep into solid rock.
Dust and stone rained down around the crater. Whether he was still conscious was impossible to tell.
Silence.
The once-chaotic room plunged into an eerie, suffocating stillness.
Karaku's mocking grin had frozen solid, fan still raised mid-swing. His eyes were wide, pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
Zenitsu and Tanjiro stood rooted in place, mouths hanging open, barely breathing.
Rin slowly lowered his fist. Tiny sparks of lingering lightning danced across his knuckles before he casually flicked them away.
He turned his head toward Karaku, who still hadn't moved.
A faint, bloodthirsty smile curved slowly across Rin's lips.
"You're next… fan freak."
____
12 Advance chapters:Patreon/slept01