"Tanjiro..."
Outside Natagumo Mountain, Zenitsu wailed Tanjiro's name, his face a mask of woe. Everyone else had ventured into the mountain, leaving him behind, too cowardly to follow, stuck guarding the rescued Demon Slayer.
"Do they hate me or something?..." Zenitsu mumbled, sitting dejectedly by the roadside. "If we're really comrades, how could they just abandon me like this? Truth is... if just two people had tried to coax me, I would've gone with them, no matter how terrified I was."
"Chirp, chirp..." A little sparrow was persistently chirping something into Zenitsu's ear. This sparrow, Chuntaro, was Zenitsu's companion. While most Demon Slayers were assigned Kasugai Crows, for some unknown reason, he'd gotten a sparrow.
"Hah, easy for you to say," Zenitsu sighed. "You don't understand a thing about human feelings, do you?"
Chuntaro, looking utterly dismayed (QAQ), could only manage a "....." Then, it flew up and started pecking furiously at Zenitsu's hand.
"Aaaah! Ow, ow, ow! You little brat! You're not cute at all! Nezuko-chan is so adorable, and then there's you... Wait a minute, Nezuko-chan?!"
Zenitsu shot to his feet and sprinted towards the mountain, completely forgetting the injured, unconscious Demon Slayer he'd just dumped on the ground. "Aaaah! Nezuko-chan went into the mountain!"
"Nezuko-chan, wait for meeee...!"
Uchiha Nagi, Tanjiro, and Inosuke had already ventured deep into the forest. True to his usual methods, Nagi had sent a shadow clone ahead to scout the path.
Inosuke, ever impulsive, tried to charge forward but was held back by Nagi.
"Look around," Nagi said, gesturing towards the darkened woods. "The air is thick with spider silk. It's hard to spot with the naked eye in this gloom, but it's everywhere—on the ground, in the grass, draped between the trees." "No matter where we step, we're bound to brush against these threads. And see these little spiders?" Nagi casually picked one up from a nearby branch. "The forest is teeming with them. They're constantly scuttling about, spinning more and more silk." He then crushed the spider under his heel.
"Then we just gotta kill all these damn spiders, right, Nagi?" Inosuke brandished his Nichirin blades, already jabbing furiously at the spiders skittering across the forest floor.
Suddenly, Tanjiro's keen nose picked up something. "Hold on," he said, pointing deeper into the woods. "I smell someone over there! A human!"
They rushed to the spot and found a lone Demon Slayer, clearly a survivor of an earlier attack. Tanjiro gently patted his shoulder, which made the man jump violently.
"It's okay, don't be afraid," Tanjiro said reassuringly. "We're here as reinforcements. I'm Kamado Tanjiro, Mizunoto rank."
The man flinched at the touch, whipping his head around. Relief washed over his face when he saw they were human, but it was quickly replaced by a profound disappointment.
"Mizunoto?" he choked out. "Why send Mizunoto-ranked slayers? If it's not a Hashira... it doesn't matter how many of any other rank you send. They'll all just end up dead!" His voice cracked with despair. He buried his face in his hands, sinking to the ground and sobbing.
Thwack!
"You damn coward!" Inosuke landed a solid punch on the man's head, showing no mercy. "Stop your blubbering and tell us what the hell is going on!"
The terrified slayer then began to recount his ordeal. His name was Yamada, and he was part of a Demon Slayer squad dispatched to Natagumo Mountain. Unlike his comrades, he'd had an incredible stroke of luck and had somehow managed to escape the initial horror. While the others were being gruesomely forced to turn on each other, seemingly controlled by an unseen force, he alone had been overlooked.
It's similar to a Puppet Technique, Nagi mused internally, but this one controls living humans.
Suddenly, Nagi's senses flared. A powerful presence had just materialized nearby...
"Tanjiro, Inosuke," Nagi said, his gaze fixed on the pale moon hanging in the sky, his voice calm. "Take this man and go find the others who are being controlled. There might still be time to save them."
"What is it, Nagi-nii?" Tanjiro asked, sensing the shift in Nagi's demeanor.
"A major player just showed up," Nagi stated, drawing a Nichirin Blade. It was the one he'd casually picked up from the injured slayer they'd left outside the mountain; after all, dealing with demons that couldn't be permanently dispatched without one was just a hassle. "You two aren't a match for this one."
"Huh?!"
Tanjiro and Inosuke snapped their gazes skyward. Bathed in the ethereal glow of the full moon, a pale figure of a boy hovered in mid-air—no, not hovering. He was standing delicately upon almost invisible threads of spider silk. The aura emanating from this new demon was on an entirely different level from any they had faced before.
"So that's what it was," the demon boy mused, his voice soft yet chilling. "I sensed something enticing on this mountain... a Marechi, it seems." Gulp. He couldn't help but swallow, his predatory instincts flaring. In his eyes, Uchiha Nagi was an exquisite delicacy. And what made it even more irresistible was that this human wasn't just any Marechi, but a prime specimen—the rarest of the rare. Consuming him would undoubtedly allow him to grow significantly stronger.
"Go! Get the others to safety! I can handle this one alone!" Nagi barked at Tanjiro and Inosuke, his voice sharp with urgency. Yamada was already cowering behind them.
"R-Right!" Tanjiro stammered, then turned to Inosuke. "Inosuke, use your Beast Breathing to locate them!"
"You got it!" Inosuke squeezed his eyes shut, his senses expanding. "Beast Breathing, Seventh Fang: Spatial Awareness!" he muttered. A moment later, his eyes snapped open. "Found 'em! This way!" He leaped to his feet, pointed towards a section of the dense woods, and charged headlong into the trees. "Aaaaargh! PIG ASSAULT!"
Once Tanjiro, Inosuke, and Yamada had disappeared into the undergrowth, Nagi turned his calm gaze back to the boy suspended on the threads. So this is one of them, he thought, one of the upper echelon of this world's fighters—a Twelve Kizuki.
"My name is Rui," the demon boy said, his crimson eyes fixed on Nagi. "You feel... different. Special. Though I can't quite pinpoint why."
Lower Rank Five, Rui. Nagi read the characters engraved in the demon's eyes. He often wondered about the leader of these demons, Kibutsuji Muzan, and his penchant for branding his twelve most powerful subordinates by carving numerals directly into their eyeballs.
"Well, if we're going to do this," Nagi said with a slight, almost playful smirk, "might as well start with a proper warm-up, don't you think?" And with that, he decided to go big. "Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!"
An immense, roaring inferno erupted from Nagi, engulfing the surrounding section of the forest in an instant. Whether it would trigger a full-blown forest fire was the least of his concerns. This was Rui's domain, after all. The grass, the bushes, the towering trees—everything was infested with those tiny spiders and their pervasive silk. It would be all too easy to get entangled, and it was obvious Rui's Blood Demon Art utilized these threads to manipulate his victims. The last thing Nagi wanted was to find his limbs suddenly under the demon's control mid-battle. Even if he could break free, that momentary vulnerability could be fatal. So, a wide-scale, field-clearing attack was the logical first step.
Besides, ever since awakening his Mangekyo Sharingan, Nagi's chakra reserves, which had stagnated for a long while, had begun to surge dramatically. That was the ridiculously overpowered nature of the Uchiha: awaken these eyes, and not only did your combat prowess skyrocket, but your chakra levels often followed suit. And compared to the standard three-tomoe Sharingan, the Mangekyo's dojutsu capabilities were vastly more potent, granting access to incredibly powerful innate genjutsu. Even a seasoned and wary shinobi like Danzo could be ensnared if caught off guard. Adding to that potent mix—Uchiha Nagi's body also harbored White Zetsu cells.
"What the—?!" Inosuke, already some distance away, skidded to a halt as he saw the colossal pillar of fire erupt behind them, painting the night sky orange. His battle lust flared instantly, and he whirled around, ready to charge back into the fray. But Tanjiro grabbed his arm. "Inosuke, wait! We need to rescue the captured Demon Slayers first and deal with any other demons we find. Then we can go back and help Nagi-nii!"
"The hell with that! Who cares about those damn weaklings—" Inosuke snarled.
"Inosuke, don't you have any idea how strong Nagi-nii is?" Tanjiro yelled, his voice firm. "If it were you or Zenitsu who'd been captured, he'd do the same for us! And I would choose to save you first too!"
For a beat, Inosuke just stared, momentarily stunned by Tanjiro's words. "F-Fine..." he grumbled, the fight draining out of him slightly. "We save the others first. Whatever." He scratched the side of his boar mask, a strange, unfamiliar warmth spreading through his chest. What the heck is this weird, fuzzy feeling anyway?