‹Demon Slayer Nezuko› : A Kimetsu no Yaiba Story

Chapter 11: Beginning of the Final Selection

Notes from previous chapter:

- Nezuko beats Sabito and slices the Boulder quicker than Tanjiro in the original story. This is due to her outstanding talent as a swordswoman: Tanjiro took six months, Nezuko five months. This might not sound much, but it's actually important.

- Adding onto the earlier point, Tanjiro won against Sabito because of his sense of smell: he learned to smell the "Opening Thread", and using this skill, he hadslashed Sabito's opening. In contrast to this, Nezuko doesn't have this special sense of smell. She overcame Sabito with superior skills only, slicing the boulder even when she has much lower power than Tanjiro as a girl. —— hopefully this shows how talented she is.

- This point also applies to earlier chapters, but I am writing all of the elemental effects released by Breathing Forms as 'imaginary representation' of the attacks. In the future, when I talk about Giyu splashing water everywhere and flame erupting from Rengoku's body, please keep in mind it's not actually happening.

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Recap of last chapter:

Five months had passed since Nezuko began training under Makomo and Sabito. During that time she has absorbed the two's battle style with her outstanding talent.

After a long, draining battle, Nezuko defeats Sabito and succeeds in slicing the massive boulder atop Mt. Sagiri.

When she opened her eyes, however, her mentors Makomo and Sabito were nowhere to be seen.

* * * * *

——Since that day.

Nezuko looked everywhere she could for traces of the two children — Sabito and Makomo. She couldn't find a single evidence of human activity inside Mt. Sagiri except for Urokodaki's settlement and the traps he used to set up.

She continued to search every settlement built in the mountain range surrounding Mt. Sagiri. She descended to all nearby towns from a walking distance from the mountain, knocked on every door, looking for those two.

—The two of them had been at Mt. Sagiri every day to train Nezuko. Their homes must be somewhere nearby at a walking distance.

Thinking this, she continued her search — however, to no avail.

Nezuko couldn't understand why she couldn't find them.

"Where are you guys.... Sabito.... Makomo."

Her memory of their last parting was hazy, since she had been low on oxygen from right after her duel with Sabito... although she felt like something strange and important had happened back then, she couldn't remember it well.

——About two weeks had passed since Nezuko had sliced the boulder, successfully overcoming Urokodaki's test.

That marked the tenth week that had elapsed since Urokodaki and Giyu took Tanjiro to the Demon Slayer Corps headquarters; two months and two weeks. Despite telling Nezuko that they'd take no longer than two months to return, they had yet to do so, even after two weeks have passed.

—Something serious might've happened at the Corps Headquarters.

—Perhaps they were simply late for trivial reasons.