It was long ago that I began my new life.
I was an ordinary modern person, but I was hit by a drunk driver, met my end in a traffic accident, and died.
And then I was reincarnated. The Meiji era. I was born as the son of an ordinary family in Japan, just as the Meiji era was beginning.
I was just a common, dime-a-dozen peasant. A household that lived by farming and doing other odd jobs. I couldn't even dream of learning to read.
But I didn't mind much. There would be many opportunities to learn to read later, and having received a modern education, I was relatively knowledgeable by this era's standards.
I dreamed of becoming a merchant and was living an ordinary life.
I thought this world was simply the past of the world I had lived in. Even if it was a different world, I believed it was an ordinary world without fantasy. But...
People were dying.
People were dying at the hands of monsters called oni.
Monsters that ate people and drank their blood. I realized what kind of place this world was.
But what good was knowing? I didn't want to die, but I knew I couldn't run away. Driven purely by instinct, I foolishly charged with a hoe in hand. To save a child on the brink of being devoured.
The result was that I died right then and there.
No, I thought I had died.
When I regained consciousness, I was using my own hands and mouth to tear apart and devour the very child I had intended to save.
I felt self-loathing and guilt.
I despaired at my own form, having become an oni. Of course, knowing this world as I did, I had the knowledge to break this situation, but it was decades in the future.
The idea of having to live by eating humans until then... I decided I would just die.
"Kibutsuji Muzan."
I uttered the Demon King's name. Now I would die by the curse.
But, for some reason, I was perfectly fine.
It was an anomaly.
Why did I not have the constraints placed upon the oni?
There was no way to know the reason, but I felt a sliver of hope at not being ruled by that contemptible monster.
From that day on, I began a new life.
A life as an oni, not a human. I had a body that could not survive without eating humans, and to live, I ate humans.
I didn't eat just any human. I sought out and ate the worst of humans.
Criminals who killed people and fled, corrupt officials who oppressed the innocent, humans who sold their families for money. I only hunted and ate humans I judged to be trash by my standards.
To live, to become stronger.
Eating humans still filled me with revulsion, but I devoured them for my future.
As a result, I acquired a Blood Demon Art. I could feel it instinctively. I didn't know what it was, but I decided to test the Blood Demon Art right away.
Please let it be something good.
And so, a crimson light flashed before my eyes and something appeared.
A girl, it was a girl. A girl with a somewhat familiar appearance.
"Ahh, so you have called for me. Master♡"
"Huh?"
Why is it Kiyohime.
My Blood Demon Art... seems to be something strange.