The Demon Queen

Finding Kokushibou😈

They all died immediately. The room was completely set on fire. The wild, uncontrollable flames would certainly spread throughout the entire Castle.

I stood there, sweating from the extreme heat, futilely blowing a shaky, ugly tune from that flute. My spine was in increasingly more pain. The wisteria had spread down towards my lower back. I could feel that my body was trying to regenerate, but it was not enough. The poisons inside the bullets were too strong and were spreading too fast.

I wondered if I would heal better and be able to filter out the poison if I found some humans to eat. But those would only be the Demon Slayers here, and they were possibly all equipped with poison on their bodies for that exact reason.

It didn't matter. I had to find some way to regain my strength. I could check the corpses outside and strip them of their clothes to see if they had anything hidden on them. It was a disgusting thought to me, but it seemed it would have to be d one.

I blew into the flute again.

"So much for 'I'll hear it if you make a tune with this flute'," I said to myself. "Not like I believed it would work, anyway."

I stared into the fire.

"I hope he's okay ..."

I couldn't waste any more time. To my advantage, the fire was burning at the wall and spreading to the sides, leaving the path to the room's doorway free. I turned around and ran out. I ran at a noticeably slower speed than I usually would have been able to, but I was still able to keep some kind of velocity.

The area outside of the room was empty. It was not littered with the corpses of lower-ranking Demon Slayers like it was in the wing I was in before I was transported here. That meant that there was no potential food around, but it also meant that the lower-ranking Slayers were not sent here. As I continued running, I was able to sense a few Hashira in the distance and a strange demon energy that I couldn't quite make out.

I stopped running and asked myself if there was another demon like that Yushiro that was brought along. It wouldn't have surprised me that Tamayo made more than one of her own. I needed to concentrate more to get a better sense of the demon. I closed my eyes and tried to scan more specifically into the demon's energy. There was something wrong. It was as if the vibrations of the demon's energy had been tampered with. They were scratchy and broken, not smooth and easy to read as they normally would be.

This can't be ... I thought.

I grabbed the flute and blew into it as strongly as I could.

The vibrations reacted to it.

I blew again. The vibrations reacted again.

The flute fell from my hand and lightly banged against my chest.

How is that energy his?

My eyes popped open wider.

What did they do to him!?

I became filled with an extreme anger. The pain in my body was still getting worse, but despite it all, I was able to push through it and continue on, faster and more aggressive than before.

Michi! I'm coming!

I blew the flute again.

It seemed that Kokushibou's energy was trying to explode out of him. I could sense him so clearly, as well as the four Hashira-strength Slayers in his proximity.

I'll kill them all! I'll destroy them all!

I jolted around a corner and stormed through another room. I sensed that they were all below me, so I stopped. I shot out tentacles from my body and stabbed them through the floor to make a hole. Without hesitating a second, I jumped through and landed on the floor below me. My feet had just hit the bottom when I swung my sword and sent out a Sun Breathing attack.

One, two, three, four ... I thought, counting the human bodies as I watched my attack burst out towards two standing male Slayers. Those two are alive. The others are dead.

My flames were blown away by a wind attack. I was there, able to see my enemies clearly -- a shorter, white-haired man and a giant-like, large man in monk's clothing.

The white-haired man raised an eyebrow. "How the hell are you using Breathing?" he asked in a scratchy tone. "This makes you more of a pain in the ass."

I shot out a tentacle at him in an attempt to impale him through his stomach. Before I hit the Wind Hashira, the man in the monk's clothing cut my tentacle with his axe. Before I could regenerate the tip in a split-second, he swung the spiked iron ball he was wielding at me.

"Damn you!" I leapt out of the way.

It was then that I heard loud, aggressive, animal-like growling coming from deeper in the room. My senses heightened, and I could tell immediately that the sound was coming from Kokushibou.

"What did you do to him!?" The words exploded out of me.

The white-haired man laughed. "We cut off his head --"

"Sun Breathing: Fifth Form!" I sprung into the air and prepared myself to decapitate the Wind Hashira as flames surrounded him.

The Wind Hashira laughed and held his sword in defence. "And he so desperately wanted to live --"

The other Hashira's spiked iron ball came swinging at me at an extreme force.

"That he disfigured himself to grow his head back!"

Hearing the Wind Hashira shake with laughter, I dodged the other Hashira's attack and sped over as if teleporting to him. I was completely numb. I couldn't feel any emotion except the desire to kill. My speed surpassed that of the taller Hashira's ability to perceive my movements, and I threw my hand to the back of his head.

"Blood Demon Art ..." I started to rot his body.

"Gyomei!" the Wind Hashira yelled.

I dug my fingers into the skull of the Hashira named Gyomei. "Die," I said, before I yanked my fingers out of him and shoved his decaying body to the floor.