Chapter 125: Remnant Flame Blade × The Strongest Human's Covetousness
"A ghost!"
Shinsuke had been crouched on the beam. When he heard the noise and looked down, he yelped and dove behind Fukuda.
A ghost calling out ghosts. Who the hell are you talking about?
Fukuda grabbed Shinsuke by the neck and twisted. Crack. The room went silent.
"It is not a demon," Sakonji Urokodaki said. Aside from Tanjiro, he had the sharpest sense of smell of anyone alive.
He could easily distinguish between "dead things" and "living things" through scent alone, even down to the exact number of people a demon had eaten while alive.
Right now, the door and window have not moved. Unless a demon had used a Blood Demon Art to make the blade vanish into thin air—but there was no trace of the nauseating stench unique to Blood Demon Arts lingering in the room.
That proved it was not a demon's doing.
Giyu Tomioka was the fastest to react. The instant the short blade dissolved into specks of light, he lunged for the south wall. But he was still too slow. He could only watch helplessly as the light slipped through his fingers.
"No one touched it. It vanished on its own," Giyu said after a moment's silence, clenching his hand. In that brief instant, he had felt something shift from solid to void. It was strange, hard to put into words.
Sabito folded his arms and glanced at Roy, who was sound asleep on the bed. "Could it be related to Eiichiro?"
"The blade is his. They are closest. If the blade vanished, he should have sensed it."
The fox-masked youth looked around calmly. "I suggest we wait and see. We can ask Eiichiro when he wakes tomorrow morning."
"Senior really dotes on Eiichiro... he can't even bear to wake him," Makomo murmured, chin propped on her hand as she crouched nearby, glancing between them all and quietly waiting for dawn.
"Let it be, then." A long sigh drifted through the paper screen and faded into the night.
The oil lamp was snuffed. People and ghosts alike, each with their own thoughts, either slept or found a corner to hide in. The mountain wind howled. That night, sleep did not come easily.
Ten in the morning. The sun shone bright, but perhaps because Q&A Town was so desolate, even when sunlight spilled into the crumbling alleys, the air stayed cold and eerie.
In the corner where the camera was hidden, Roy carefully visualized the "short blade" in his mind. In the palm of his outstretched hand, under Rika's astonished gaze, specks of light suddenly appeared. They stretched into lines, gathered into planes, and in the blink of an eye, formed a katana. The boy caught it in one smooth motion.
It was none other than the short blade that had hung on the south wall of the cabin.
"You succeeded… so quickly."
Nakajima Sachiko looked at the boy with surprise and praise. "You have real talent."
"Of course. He is the Zoldyck family's eldest son, after all," Gotoh said, straightening his back with pride. Rika had only just begun learning about Nen, but that did not stop her from picking up on the meaning of "impressive" in their words. She became even more determined to hold tight to the Zoldyck family's coattails.
Aboard the airship, the camera captured the scene.
Netero did not seem particularly shocked. He merely glanced at Zeno, now believing his earlier claim that he truly knew nothing about Roy's Nen category.
"Hohoho… well, no need to keep guessing now. Turning the intangible solid, conjuring from nothing… Zeno, if I recall correctly, this is the second Conjurer in your family after Zigg, is it not?"
The old man thought of Zigg, and a shadow of sadness flickered in his sharp, knowing eyes. "The old man always said I lured him away. In truth, he knows full well that Zigg left home of his own will, wanting to go to the Dark Continent to gather materials and perfect Game of the Dead."
"In the blink of an eye, it has been twenty years. Some things, when it is time to let them go, should be let go."
"I cannot let it go," Zeno said coldly, his back to Netero as he watched the boy on the screen. Roy seemed to have grown taller in just a few days, already taking on the shape of an adult. "Right or wrong does not matter. The old man does not like you. No one can change that."
"Is that so?"
Netero did not take offense at the jab. He glanced at the short blade in Roy's hand and said with interest, "Conjurers are all a bit neurotic. Your family has no swordsmen, and yet he managed to conjure a blade through visualization alone. Quite rare."
The old man was an Enhancer. Zeno and Silva were Transmuters. Among the younger generation, Illumi was a Manipulator. Netero was right—across five generations of Zoldycks, not a single one used a blade. But…
"Roy is different."
Zeno stood with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed intently on the boy in the video. Without turning, he said, "You are wrong. His object of visualization is not the blade."
Hm?
Netero raised an eyebrow and waited for more.
Zeno drew a breath, turned toward the window where the ten o'clock sun shone bright, and his mouth curved up at one corner. "It is the sun."
"Hohoho…" Netero froze for a heartbeat, then sat up and chuckled. "The boy has some guts. As if he could ever tame the sun."
The dawn's rays are tearing through the darkness. The great sun that births all things and commands the tides. The setting sun paints the horizon in tragic beauty. No living thing could exist without the sun overhead. It was like an eye, silently watching the human world. Whether seas turned to mulberry fields, whether you or I existed—it was always there.
"Zeno, when you go back, talk to the old man again. Why not let the boy be adopted into my family? His fate is too strong. You cannot suppress it."
Zeno snorted and said bluntly, "Give him to you? So you can raise another Beyond?"
"If you want to die, go ahead and try."
See if the old man does not beat you to death.
Netero: "…"
"Hoho."
He laughed.
This time, the laughter carried a note of gloom that made Beans shiver. He pretended to pour tea, head down, quietly wiping cold sweat. What a disaster. Caught in the middle like this, trembling the whole time. This was no job for a living being.
He stole a glance at the monitor. The boy responsible for all this drew his cane-sword with a sharp ring and admired the way the blade reflected sunlight onto the opposite wall in scattered beams.
He smiled faintly and said sincerely to Nakajima Sachiko, "Compared to you, Granny, it is nothing."
It was only a conjured blade. He was still far from a true Nen beast.
Roy had that much self-awareness.
He held the short blade and wrapped it in Scorching Truth. With one hand, he flicked it in a neat flourish. Flames roared around the blade, hissing as they devoured the air. Sachiko and the "children" instinctively stepped back two paces. She could clearly sense just how blazing that wave of fire truly was.
"Hehe…" Sachiko forced a smile. "This old woman speaks the truth. With your talent, conjuring a Nen beast is only a matter of time."
The first step was always the hardest. Once the first step of "conjuration" was taken, all that remained was converting imagination into reality through aura.
Like Kurapika and his chains. Shizuku and her Blinky. Pariston and his chess pieces.
Combining "sun" and "beast," Roy dismissed Scorching Truth and sheathed the blade. With a thought, he sent the short blade back to the Demon Slayer world and watched it dissolve into scattered points of light before his eyes.
An idea was beginning to take shape.
At the same time, it startled everyone—living and dead—in the cabin.
The specks of light reappeared.
Fukuda slapped Shinsuke across the face. "Look, Eiichiro's blade… it came back!"