Muzan tore apart the flesh cocoon and saw nothing but shattered wood and stone all over the ground and a waning moon hanging high in the sky.
Then he lowered his head and swept his gaze over the crowd that had him surrounded.
After drinking the medicine Charles had prepared in advance, Beimingyu Xingming's wounds had already healed. With his breath full and steady, he said, "This is the final enemy—the Demon King Muzan. He's been weakened a lot, but do not let your guard down.
"Everyone should have noticed that bizarre body of his. I imagine that simply severing his head won't be enough to kill him. What follows is a war of attrition!
"Make ready to fight to the death until the sun rises!"
Despite his big, sturdy frame, Beimingyu Xingming was still very attentive. Although that was what he said, everyone knew well that as long as one person arrived, Muzan could be completely annihilated.
The reason for saying it was to mislead Muzan. It was only a sentence—if it could nudge even a bit of his fighting state, it was worth it.
Muzan reached up to cover his face, and an eerie laugh seeped out from beneath his palm.
"Truly praiseworthy. Four hundred years—it's the first time since that man that you demon slayers have left me this ragged!
"As a reward, I will kill you all in the cruelest way!"
Muzan felt his whole body swallowed by rage. That Tamayo woman was simply insane, hiding so many deadly poisons inside his body.
A few of the toxins were manageable; with his powerful regeneration he had decomposed or expelled them. What gave him the greatest headache were a few medicines whose effects he could not figure out.
One of them sealed his splitting ability. As for how he knew—of course he'd tried it.
To be honest, once Wuxian Castle was dragged to the surface, Muzan's first idea was to withdraw—but he failed.
Muzan also understood that the Demon Slayer Corps wanted to settle everything with him tonight. But who was not letting whom go—that was still hard to say!
The skin on Muzan's back bulged, and then whip-like tendrils drilled out, lashing and stabbing toward the swordsmen around him.
Muzan's attacks could be called utterly unpatterned; after all, Muzan himself had never learned how to fight.
Yet such attacks, for all their lack of form, were terrifying in both speed and strength, forcing everyone to respond with nerves drawn drum-tight.
Marks crisscrossed the ground in an instant—every one carved by Muzan's tendrils, each as if cut by blades.
And almost at once—even though all the swordsmen had opened their Marks and manifested the patterns—several still suffered wounds.
Muzan was vicious; his tendrils carried deadly poison, and a few even bore his own blood.
If a tendril wounded you, you were either poisoned or you ingested his blood and turned into a demon.
Even though the breath-style swordsmen could finely control their bodies to slow the spread of the toxin, they certainly could not hold out for long.
But then Muzan saw the wounded men tip something into their mouths; in the next second the bluish-purple around their wounds began to fade, and even the cuts started to heal.
"Tamayo! You wretch—dead and still causing me trouble!"
The only source of the antidote Muzan could think of was the apothecary Tamayo. Back then he'd turned her into a demon precisely for her pharmaceutical skill.
But Muzan couldn't help wondering—since when had Tamayo become capable of compounding a remedy that acted so quickly and even healed wounds!
The changes in the battle before his eyes made Muzan toss this question aside.
Everyone took out scarlet ore and awakened their Nichirin swords into crimson blades. Then they swung and neatly severed the tendrils!
Wounds cut by the crimson blades were as if branded by a hot iron—even Muzan couldn't regenerate smoothly.
At other times, Muzan might have mocked the weakness of their crimson blades; he had, after all, experienced Jiguo Yuan Yi's genuine crimson blade and knew its power.
But now, even a crimson blade that only partly restrained his regeneration was a threat that could not be ignored.
The severed tendrils turned to ash, and before Muzan's eyes a giant butterfly seemed to unfurl its wings.
Hudie Ren arrived before Muzan; the slender Nichirin sword in her hand pressed into his chest.
Hudie Ren's blade was also crimson, but that was only to let her pierce Muzan's skin; what truly worked was the drug she injected along with it.
"This is a gift from Miss Tamayo and me!"
Muzan's expression changed. What he had decomposed just now were the most harmful components; the medicines with "no effect" he had left in his body.
Now he finally knew what those medicines did.
Cunning Tamayo had deliberately split the drug in two parts, making him fail to promptly decompose the part that did nothing alone. When Hudie Ren injected the second part, it took effect at this critical moment.
Muzan felt his muscles go rigid and his blood congeal. It robbed him of the ability to act for a time.
Everyone rushed in together, and blades chopped down without mercy.
The nine Pillars of the Demon Slayer Corps, plus the four kids—thirteen in all—aimed at all of Muzan's hearts and brains, and at the same time went for the vital point of his neck.
Before anyone could celebrate, Muzan, driven by a fierce survival instinct, burst out with all his remaining potential.
"Ahhhhh!"
Muzan roared; his body writhed and twisted, and then countless gaping maws filled with fangs appeared, biting down on the blades hacking toward him.
"Damn monster!" blurted the blunt-tongued Bushichuan Shimi, and the others showed looks of revulsion as well.
Muzan's body swayed. With violent mutation he forced through part of the drug's effect within him; several irregular eyes appeared on his face, full of savagery and killing intent.
Just then, a firelight streaked across the sky and fell straight down.
That Wuxian Castle was dragged to the surface somewhere else wasn't something Charles had foreseen. After receiving a message from the messenger crow, Charles rushed over at once—and what he saw was Muzan turned into a monster.
How dire Muzan's condition was Charles could sense directly. Frightening to look at or not, his strength had been all but bled dry.
He couldn't even suppress his old wounds; the scars Jiguo Yuan Yi left four hundred years ago stood out clear upon his body.
Looking at Charles wreathed in flames, Muzan felt his very skin prickle as though facing the sun itself.
In a hoarse voice, Muzan asked, "Who are you!"
Charles felt a bit deflated. This wasn't "rescuing the scene"—had he come a little later, it looked like everyone could have chopped Muzan to pieces and then sat down for tea to wait for sunrise to watch Muzan turn to ash in the sun.
Although none of this could have happened without him, he truly didn't feel any sense of participation.
So Charles curled his lip and said, "I don't bother giving my name to someone about to go straight to hell!"
As he spoke, Charles stamped one foot on the ground; a ring of flame spread out and burned the stabbing tendrils with bony tips to ash.
The ground beneath Charles's foot split at once; the crack ran straight to Muzan, and the surging flames blasted him flying.
Everyone also saw that beneath Muzan's body a tendril connected to a massive lump of flesh—and as it writhed, that lump turned into Muzan's face.
The moment he saw Charles, Muzan hadn't planned to fight head-on—but Tamayo had sealed his splitting ability. So he could only split off a portion of his body to try to escape underground.
Charles shook his head and then flames flared in both hands.
"Can't bear to watch. Be good and go to hell to receive your punishment—let everyone have a happy future!"
"Radiant Flames of the Fire Dragon!"
The flames in Charles's hands merged into a giant fireball, and he hurled it at the airborne Muzan.
Watching that fireball approach felt like plunging into the sun; even before it touched him his body began to carbonize.
The Demon King Kibutsuji Muzan… cleared!
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