I owe you an apology š
You hit the goal (because you guys are BEASTS) and I didn't deliver the chapter. Truth is I've been really sick these past few days: terrible headache and vomiting, I couldn't even look at the screen š¤
But I'm back and recharged
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Holding back his dizziness with great effort, Sanemi was the first to move.
"Wind Breathing, Fourth Form: Rising Dust Storm!"
Three tornadoes of wind swirled around Marcus from three different angles, sealing off any escape route.
At that very same instant, Obanai vanished from sight.
"Serpent Breathing, First Form: Winding Serpent Slash!"
Like a serpent on the prowl, the flash of his sword also lunged at Marcus from a blind spot, at an angle so twisted that no human should have been able to pull it off.
An attack from the front and the back. The flanks, blocked.
Marcus smiled.
"That's more like it."
Without bothering to dodge, he drew both swords at once. With the left he blocked Sanemi's tornado, and with the right he delivered an upward slash that intercepted Obanai's blade with precision.
CLANG!
The four blades crashed together, throwing off sparks in every direction while, in that same instant, Sanemi's blade veered off course again.
He should have chained a second attack by riding the force of the block. But instead, his wrist twisted outward all of a sudden, and his whole body stumbled a step.
"Same shit again!" he growled, gritting his teeth.
At this, Obanai narrowed his eyes even further.
Kaburamaru was already telling him.
Just as Sanemi's sword was about to change its trajectory, a red arrow had coiled around his wrist and yanked hard.
"So it's a real Blood Demon Artā¦" he murmured, bewildered. "How is it that you have one?"
Without bothering to answer, Marcus stepped back several paces and began swinging his swords through the air.
One slash, two, threeā¦
Each one left a faint pink trail floating in the air. And those marks didn't dissipate ā they stayed suspended there, like the threads of a spider's web.
"Thisā¦" Shinobu furrowed her brow. "What is he trying to do?"
Giyū didn't open his mouth, but he was also bewildered. After all, Marcus's techniques were as strange as they came.
Out of everyone present, only Tanjiro shot a thoughtful glance toward the trunk where Ivy and Pearl were.
Every time Marcus came into contact with a powerful woman, he developed a new Form based on her abilities.
And by now he had this theory more than confirmed!
On Mount Natagumo he saw [Mist], and it didn't take much thinking to know it came from Tamayo. There was also the [Crimson Veil] ā he himself had been a witness to how Pearl spit out cocoons to protect herself.
As for those pink threads suspended in the airā¦ they didn't seem to match Shinobu's style at all. So the only option left was the other demon: Ivy.
Even so, he didn't open his mouth. It was his brother's secret, and it wasn't his place to reveal it. Not even to Giyū!
The battle went on.
Faced with the head-on assault of the Wind Pillar and the sneaky thrusts of the Serpent Pillar, both specialists in speed, Marcus was running into some trouble.
Butā¦ only that now: trouble.
His physical condition was on such a level that, even in the face of a coordinated attack from both of them, he managed to hold his own.
And meanwhile, he was doing something else.
Every clash, every block, every counterattack left behind a pink trail that didn't dissipate. A thread, suspended in the air, right where his sword had cut through.
When he managed to force them to back off, he took advantage of the breather to move at a brisk pace across the courtyard, swinging his blades in different directions.
And each slash added a new thread to the lattice.
Seven or eight seconds. That was all it took for the space surrounding Marcus to be completely woven through.
Dozens of pink threads floated around him: some crossed the air horizontally, others rose up from the ground, others fell diagonally in between the previous ones.
At first glance it looked like absolute chaos, without order or meaning. But, looked at up close, each one kept the edge of the cut that had traced it.
"Breath of Desire, Sixth Form: Field of Threads!"
"What kind of bullshit is thisā¦?" Sanemi furrowed his brow.
He poked at one with his sword. The blade ran straight through it ā the threads had no body, no substance, they did no damage at all. But the moment he pushed them aside, they returned to their place in less than a blink, intact.
Meanwhile, Obanai didn't say anything, though an uncomfortable feeling settled into the back of his neck. At his neck, Kaburamaru wouldn't stop writhing and hissing.
"Attack," he murmured. "Whatever this is, we can't let him keep going."
Sanemi nodded.
"Wind Breathing, First Form: Dust Whirlwind Cutter!"
"Serpent Breathing, Second Form: Venom Fangs of the Narrow Head!"
Both of them attacked. But this time, Marcus had a surprise.
Sanemi's sword veered off course at the very instant of impact. And the deflection, this time, was brutal: not only did it slice through empty air completely, but Sanemi himself tripped over his own feet and went face-first into the ground.
And Obanai's case turned out even stranger. His sword was curved, and his techniques curved too, specializing in attacking blind spots. Adding to that Kaburamaru's warnings, Marcus's invisible arrows, which traveled rather slowly, shouldn't have posed any problem.
But this time was different.
The moment he set himself to attack, Kaburamaru started hissing. He tried changing direction, and the serpent hissed again. He tried backing off, and Kaburamaru hissed once more.
Obanai trusted his companion more than he did himself. He knew she wouldn't lie to him.
That only meant one thing: Marcus was no longer reacting to his attacks with impressive reflexes. He was a step ahead. He was calculating his trajectories before he moved and leaving the arrows planted in the exact spot, waiting for him.
"How is this possibleā¦?" His pupils contracted. "How do you know where I'm going to step?"
Marcus shot him a half-cocked smile.
"Because you're in my territory."
The moment he finished the sentence, he threw a slash at him with the sword in his left hand.
And Obanai raised his own in a hurry to block it.
But at that very same instant, an Arrow coiled around his ankle and yanked violently backward. Losing his balance completely, he toppled forwardā¦ and Marcus's sword was waiting for him.
"IGURO!"
Sanemi reacted with a shout and unleashed a slash with everything he had against Marcus's back.
But Marcus, without even bothering to turn his head, raised the sword in his right hand backward in an upward cut and deflected the slash with precision.
Tip against tip!
And, at the same time, the sword in his left hand finished its work.
"Squelch!"
The edge ran along Obanai's abdomen diagonally, from his left rib to his right hip. A long wound opened up wide, and the blood started gushing.
Groaning in pain, Obanai was sent flying backward, slamming into the ground with all his weight.
At this, every Pillar furrowed their brow.
They had a sharp eye, and obviously they caught on instantly to the change in the way Marcus was fighting from the moment those threads had appeared.
Up until then, his strategy had been overwhelming: monstrous physical condition, superhuman reflexes, and, on the back of brute force, standing toe-to-toe with two Pillars of agile combat.
An ability like thatā¦
Their gazes drifted in unison toward the Stone Pillar.
That was a capability which, up until now, only GyÅmei had shown to possess.
Because when it came to perception and introspection, all the Pillars put together couldn't measure up to the soles of that blind man's shoes.
At that moment, they still didn't know.
After so many years deprived of his sight, GyÅmei had actually been the first among all the Demon Slayers to awaken the Transparent World.
And what Marcus had on his hands in that instantā¦
The technique obtained from Ivy, the Sixth Form of the Breath of Desire, Field of Threadsā¦
It could be considered, without exaggeration, a simplified version of the Transparent World!
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Marcus is DOMINATING two Hashira at once... wanna see how this ends? š
250 PS and the next chapter drops today. You know what to do š
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And if PS aren't your thing but you still want more chapters...
P-a-t-r-e-o-n ā Athome790