Looking at the Human-Headed Spider's bloodshot, crazed eyes, Kurozawa felt an indescribably complex emotion.
Just two months ago, they were swordsmen of the same generation, and now he had been reduced to this state.
Connecting the dots between the large number of swordsmen who had gone missing on Mount Natagumo and the grotesque appearance of this Human-Headed Spider, Kurozawa was almost certain he was one of the missing swordsmen.
"To be able to transform people into this state, it seems this Twelve Kizuki has a truly vicious nature."
The Pitch-Black Aura surged and burned, completely engulfing and drowning the Human-Headed Spider. After a few breaths, it was reduced to ashes and dissipated.
This Human-Headed Spider gave Kurozawa one Potential Point, but strangely, there was no Power of Despair.
Without dwelling on it, after decisively dealing with the Human-Headed Spider, Kurozawa looked around at the calm surroundings. After standing still for a moment, he took out his Flint, broke off a relatively sturdy branch, and ignited it.
This time, he didn't rush forward like the wind. Instead, holding the burning branch torch, he began to wander through the dark forest like someone who was lost.
Because Kurozawa felt that Mount Natagumo was quite large and relying solely on himself would make it difficult to quickly find the main target, he lit the flame. The bright flame illuminating the dark forest could drive away wild beasts, and at the same time, it would attract predators fiercer and more powerful than beasts.
The most skilled hunters often appear as prey. Kurozawa was now luring the snake out of its hole, waiting for the prey who thought of itself as the hunter to deliver itself to him.
The vegetation on Mount Natagumo was very dense, so the light reflected by the moon was very, very dim. When the torch lit up, it was like a small sun rising in the darkness, making it difficult not to attract attention.
Walking and stopping, his vision and perception constantly detected a large number of gazes.
However, most of them were from ordinary mountain insects and beasts, filled with terror and not daring to approach Kurozawa at all. Not to mention the dangerous aura on Kurozawa that made wild beasts reluctant to provoke him, the fire alone made them unwilling to come near.
And among the gazes filled with terror and vigilance, several gazes full of malice were also precisely detected and locked onto by Kurozawa.
A smile curved at the corner of his mouth. Kurozawa's gaze was like lightning, and he quickly turned his head, following the malicious gazes. But the result left him somewhat disappointed.
Those looks full of malice were all from the eyes of Human-Headed Spiders. Just by lighting the torch and walking for less than ten minutes, Kurozawa had attracted more than a dozen Human-Headed Spiders.
"Are these all the missing swordsmen?"
Among the monstrous and terrifying Human-Headed Spiders, there was no figure Kurozawa recognized. And at the same time Kurozawa discovered them, it also meant they had discovered Kurozawa beforehand.
Amidst the insane, distorted, and painful screeching, Human-Headed Spiders sprang up one after another, pouncing on Kurozawa from various directions.
However, while these spiders looked terrifying, they actually didn't have much combat ability. A normal adult, as long as they could suppress their fear, could deal with them.
Effortlessly, Kurozawa dealt with these neither-human-nor-Demon Human-Headed Spiders.
"Walking here and having over ten appear at once, is there a nest nearby?"
After burning the last Human-Headed Spider to ashes and gaining a pitiful amount of Potential Points, Kurozawa keenly spotted the crucial point.
The branch in his hand was just about to burn out, so Kurozawa extinguished it. After confirming that the remnants would not cause a forest fire, he took another branch and lit the flame again.
Although Mount Natagumo was terrifying and might hide many Demons, setting the mountain on fire was something Kurozawa couldn't bring himself to do. After all, Demons were not afraid of ordinary damage, and he might even end up trapped in the fire himself.
During the brief stop, Kurozawa observed the initial positions and distribution of the Human-Headed Spiders, then slowly walked in the direction where their numbers were most numerous and dense.
In the eerie forest, only a ball of flame could be seen moving steadily, without any flickering, very stable.
As Kurozawa continued to go deeper in this direction, more and more Human-Headed Spider figures appeared near him, and they were closer and more frequent.
He killed them as they came. Although the Potential Points were few, even a mosquito's leg is meat, and there were quite a lot of them, so Kurozawa happily accepted it. It was something he could solve with just a wave of his hand anyway.
After going deeper, Kurozawa looked at the surrounding environment and felt that he was about to find the main target.
Because between the silent, standing trees, spider webs began to appear. At first, there were only one or two, but by the time Kurozawa reached this point and stopped, his eyes were filled with giant, bone-white spider webs. He could see Human-Headed Spiders crawling on the webs, as well as long, wrapped shapes resembling zongzi, tightly bound in dense white silk.
"What's wrapped inside..."
Among the objects tightly wrapped in spider webs, the shapes varied, and the sizes differed. The largest were human-shaped, while the smallest were only the size of a head.
After dealing with the Human-Headed Spiders crawling on the webs one by one, Kurozawa took the Nichirin Blade from his waist and slowly probed a head-sized ball of spider web with the tip of his blade.
After breaking through the outer layer of silk and seeing what was inside, Kurozawa's brows furrowed.
It was a human head, without hair, pale-faced, with deformed, short spider legs growing below the head, not yet fully formed. It looked like the embryonic form of a Human-Headed Spider.
"Like this, they eat the bodies of the people they catch and turn their heads into spiders?"
Looking at the Human-Headed Spider, not yet fully formed and disgustingly grotesque, Kurozawa couldn't remain calm. He felt himself getting a little angry.
His personality had always been steady, but seeing his own kind turned into such disgusting, neither-human-nor-Demon appearances, he couldn't help but feel enraged.
Kurozawa wouldn't feel anger for the swordsmen who died in battle against Demons, because that was the swordsmen's destiny, abandoning their lives to live forever in battle. But to be turned into this state was truly unacceptable.
Immediately after, Kurozawa opened the human-shaped spider silk bundles and found that inside were pale corpses, both male and female. Looking at their clothing and decorations, some were Demon Slayer Corps swordsmen, but more were just ordinary people.
This was not a Demon's lair. Those Human-Headed Spiders were not even considered Demons, just pitiful, tragic creatures without souls. Kurozawa realized that by accident, he seemed to have stumbled into the food storage of the Demon on Mount Natagumo.
"Eating human bodies and then using human heads as spider servants... There truly are all kinds of Demons."
Kurozawa sneered, then one by one, he burned the spider web bundles to ashes, considering it a release for the people who died here, so they wouldn't be turned into ugly Human-Headed Spiders.
Just as Kurozawa was about to clear and burn all the bothersome spider webs with the torch, he discovered crystalline threads, different from ordinary spider webs, extending towards a certain point ahead.
These special threads were difficult to see with the naked eye. Kurozawa only discovered them by chance, and the special threads were also slightly trembling due to Kurozawa's previous actions.
"Hmm?"
Thinking of how spiders detect when prey is caught, Kurozawa guessed that he had likely been discovered, and the end of these special threads must be where the hunter of Mount Natagumo was located.
Without waiting for the other party to show up, Kurozawa's figure suddenly moved. Like a tyrannosaurus sweeping through the forest, the momentum was astonishing. He had no intention of hiding himself at all.
Two or three minutes later, Kurozawa stopped.
Because before him, a cleared space appeared, and in that space, a wooden house hovered in the air, silently existing under the moonlight.
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