"No need to waste time."
The two ran at incredible speed, openly weaving through the terrified stares of passersby. Mukago was as nimble as an antelope. A light tap of her toes let her cover ten meters. But halfway through she suddenly stopped.
In the alley ahead of her, two drunk men reeking of alcohol were laughing as they pinned down a crying girl to the ground.
Mukago gave Ivan a pitiful look.
"I'm hungry. Can I eat something first? Being hungry feels really bad."
"Go ahead. Make sure the girl is unharmed." Ivan looked up at the moon embedded in the night sky and added, "Five minutes."
"Thank you. I won't hold back then." Mukago first bowed to Ivan, then used her sharp claws to tear open the big man's throat. Seeing his companion's neck ripped open with blood gushing out, the other drunk guy got so scared he stumbled backward. He held onto the wall, his legs shaking uncontrollably.
"De… demon, it's a demon!" The alcohol left in the drunk guy's body leaked down his legs onto the ground. Once he sobered up, he scrambled in panic to run outside. He didn't make it two steps before a slash of sword energy from Ivan took his head clean off.
"T-Thankyou!" The crying girl looked at them in bewilderment, smoothed her clothes, and thanked them before bolting out of there.
"You really aren't like those Hashira. They seem to hate it when I eat. But to me, humans are like delicious rice. If I don't eat I'll starve." Mukago enjoyed her meal while flashing Ivan a satisfied, adorable smile.
"Eat quickly. I'll remind you when time's up."
Ivan wasn't idle either. He opened his panel to check the fusion progress.
[Hyper Sensitivity fusion in progress. Current progress: 16%]
This fusion speed is a bit slower than absorbing Compound V, but it's still much faster than natural fusion.
Actually, it was easy to explain. The breathing technique could enhance all of a person's senses, and Ivan, who kept the marks active at all times, was basically pushing his perception to the maximum every second.
The two effects stacked on each other, so Hyper Sensitivity's fusion speed naturally increased by two times, or even three times more.
The faint evening breeze blowing from afar carried the quiet chatter of people.
Ivan could detect subtle differences in the scent of blood in the air.
Everything in his line of sight became crystal clear. The details of any object were magnified in his eyes. For example, the ants carrying food in the corner of the wall. Ivan could even see the tiny hairs on their bodies moving.
Five minutes later,
Mukago reluctantly wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth.
She patted her round belly and said to Ivan, who was resting with his eyes closed, "I'm full. It wasn't the cleanest meal, but I finished it. Wasting food is shameful after all."
Most demons showed some strange expressions when eating humans.
But Mukago was completely natural about it. It was no different from a normal person eating.
This made Ivan curious about her past.
When the two walked out of the alley, Ivan asked, "How did you become a demon?"
Mukago looked lost in thought.
"It was one winter. My family and I lived in this town. They gave me all the food for winter and starved to death themselves.
But even that food wasn't enough for me. To survive I had to beg in town. But those people not only refused to give me food, they beat and kicked me, calling me a disgusting beggar.
I was so hungry. The feeling of being close to death was terrifying. But I didn't want to die. So I killed a drunk who had collapsed in the snow. I hated drunk people because making alcohol takes a lot of grain. If they had given me that grain, I could have lived for a long time. But when I was about to eat him... that lord found me.
He told me that eating other living things to survive is the law of nature. Then he told me to hold out my hands and catch the blood dripping from his fingertip."
"I see."
Ivan finally understood why Mukago was so afraid of death and hunger.
"You're too slow. I'll carry you."
Ivan grabbed the purple butterfly knot on Mukago's kimono and his legs exploded with speed far beyond rapid movement. Although he had no instrument to measure his current speed.
But based on past experience, Ivan judged his current speed was about twice what it used to be, meaning around three times the speed of sound, or even faster!
"So fast!" Mukago watched in amazement as everything around her blurred backward.
Even using both her Blood Demon Arts, she could never reach this terrifying speed. Only now did the last bit of thought about running away in her mind vanish like smoke.
Soon, the shadow of a village appeared in Mukago's sight.
Along with it came a faint scent of blood.
A few seconds later,
Ivan, still carrying Mukago, saw the so-called Lower Rank Two, Rokuro. He was standing in the middle of a pile of corpses, picking tonight's meal.
At first glance, Rokuro looked like an ordinary middle-aged man. He wore a black long robe with a matching black cloak over it.
The upper half of his face was covered in black patterns, dense at first then thinning out, like cracked porcelain.
"Mukago… and an unfamiliar Hashira."
"So you exposed my location. You actually brought a Hashira here just to save your own life." The characters for Lower Two were engraved in Rokuro's right eye.
He looked at the two of them with a dark gaze. "Mukago, if that lord finds out you dared to betray him, he'll kill you without hesitation. And you actually used up your lifespan to open the marks just to deal with me, a Lower Rank. How incredibly stupid."
"But that's fine. If I can kill you and eat you, the benefits will be way higher than eating a hundred normal humans!" Unlike Mukago, Rokuro had climbed to this position through repeated Kizuki ranking battles, stepping on the corpse of the previous Lower Rank Two.
"Too much talking."
Ivan set Mukago down. She wisely ran to the side and hid behind a stone pillar, poking her small head out to watch the fight between the two.
"Blood Demon Art: Rotating Strangle!"
With Rokuro's furious roar, a ring of eerie blood light appeared around his body, mixed with countless blood threads. Those threads spun rapidly around him, whipping up howling air currents.
It felt like anything entering the blood light would be shredded instantly.
"Die." Rokuro showed a vicious smile.
He pushed both hands forward. The rapidly spinning blood-colored wheel flew toward Ivan.
At the same time, an extremely powerful suction force erupted from the center of the wheel, pulling in and shredding every corpse in its path, adding even more cruel crimson to the already eerie blood color.
"You dare come after me without a Nichirin sword? Bahaha! You're just asking for death!"
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[]~(￣▽￣)~*
Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69