Knowing time was pressing, Marcus didn't stop for a single second, and following the tracks, he soon heard the sounds of fighting again.
Shouts. Metal against metal. And amid all the noise, unmistakable—Tanjiro's voice.
He sighed with relief. Thank god. He'd made it in time.
He emerged from the trees at the edge of another clearing, already mentally preparing his best entrance and ready to see the look of surprise on Tanjiro's face, when a savage howl ruined his plans.
"OHO~ THERE'S TWO MORE OVER HERE!!!"
A blur of boar was heading straight for him.
No… Not a boar. It was Inosuke. Though the difference was debatable. He was running with his head down, eyes peeking through the holes of his mask, arms spread wide and kicking up dust with every step like a stampede.
"MIIIIINE!!!"
Not far away, Tanjiro was fighting a swordsman whose arms were twisted like pretzels but who kept attacking desperately. And hearing Inosuke's shout, helplessness crossed his face as he answered without looking. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you more than any—"
He turned mid-sentence and his expression changed completely.
"WAIT!!! STOP, INOSUKE!!! STOP!!!"
But asking Inosuke to stop was like asking an avalanche to hold up, and his desperate shout not only didn't slow him down—it sped him up.
Inside the boar mask, the gears in Inosuke's brain spun at full speed and reached the only possible conclusion: 'Haha! He's yelling because he's scared I'll outdo him! THAT MEANS I'M WINNING!'
Laughing wildly, he spread his arms even wider and launched himself at Marcus with his eyes gleaming with excitement.
The plan was:
That guy over there and the girl were clearly tangled in spider threads. They were victims. They needed to be rescued. And the rescue technique was simple: grab the subject by the waist, hoist them up, and hang them from the nearest tree.
Marcus stood perfectly still, and without even letting go of Nezuko's hand, he simply... blinked.
And deep within his pupils, the gold flared.
!!!
Every hair on Inosuke's body stood on end!
His arms, his legs, his neck—every single hair!
He didn't know what it was, but… his beastly instincts screamed a frantic warning!
Twisting his body mid-sprint, he tried to brake and get away from whatever was making his hair stand on end—
"AAAAAH!!!"
Out of nowhere he was pinned in midair.
Arms spread, legs extended, like a starfish floating a meter off the ground.
He started thrashing, pulling with all his strength, but something he couldn't see was holding him from every direction.
"WHAT IS THIS?! What's got me tangled up?! Gross! LET ME GO!!" He turned his head, meeting Marcus's gaze. "Hey! That was you, wasn't it?! Put me down right now! LET'S DUEL!!"
"Duel?" Marcus raised an eyebrow, his smile unchanged. "Are you sure you want that?"
"W-Wait…"
But right then, Tanjiro arrived half-running, half-stumbling, still panting after managing to free himself from the pretzel-armed slayer.
When he saw Marcus, his face contorted into a mix of joy, disbelief, and panic.
"Senpai! How are you even here?!" His eyes went straight to the figure standing calmly beside Marcus—clothes clean, not a scratch on her, watching him with curiosity. "And you brought Nezuko on top of that?!"
"Mmh!"
Nezuko huffed happily.
"Sigh…"
Tanjiro let out all his air at once, relieved. She was okay… His sister was okay.
"S-SENPAI??"
Still suspended in midair, Inosuke had stopped struggling and his eyes were gleaming through the holes in his mask, locked on Tanjiro.
"Monjiro. You have a senpai?"
A vein throbbed on Tanjiro's forehead. "IT'S TANJIRO." He took a deep breath. "And I already told you about him before!"
Inosuke froze for a moment, then responded with all the conviction in the world: "I haven't forgotten!"
"Then why did you just—?"
"People I don't care about, I don't even bother memorizing!"
"..."
"Mmh?" Nezuko tilted her head toward her brother, then toward the strange boy with the boar head.
"Forget it..." Tanjiro gave up trying to reason with Inosuke and turned to Marcus. "Put him down, please. He's my partner... even if sometimes I have a hard time believing it."
Marcus nodded and the gold flickered in his eyes.
Pluff!
Inosuke crashed to the ground like a sack of rice, but before the dust even settled he was already on his feet, swords in hand and pointing directly at Marcus's face.
"WHAT KIND OF SORCERY WAS THAT?! You carry two swords too, don't you?! COME AND FIGHT!!"
"INOSUKE!" Tanjiro stepped in front of him and whispered: "That's my Senpai, Marcus! HE'S REALLY STRONG! You can't beat him!"
"HA?! The GREAT Inosuke can't win?!" The boar mask was practically steaming. He clashed his two swords together, sending sparks flying. "LET HIM TRY ME!!"
Listening to them argue, Marcus's attention was already somewhere else. Beyond the clearing, half-hidden among the trees, several slayers were still stumbling toward them with robotic, empty movements. Only some of them… he narrowed his eyes.
"Are those corpses?"
"Yeah..." Tanjiro stopped wrestling with Inosuke and nodded, turning serious. "The demon on this mountain uses threads to control people like puppets. And the ones that are already dead... she moves those too."
"..."
Without a word, Marcus stepped forward and placed his right hand on Makomo's hilt.
"Desire Breathing, Second Form—"
Taking a deep breath, a pink mist enveloped his body all at once.
"Fox's Walk."
Swish
"So fast!" Inosuke's exclamation was the only thing that managed to come out before the sounds began: Shing, Shing, Shing, Shing.
Thin, cutting, lightning-fast, like crystal needles snapping one after another. A pink flash passed from one slayer to the next, a blink at each one, and in its wake their uniforms split open with dozens of tiny cuts.
From the openings, white spiders fell, cleanly sliced in two, turning to ash before they hit the ground.
The slayers froze, and as if their strings had been cut, they lost all support and collapsed.
And then Marcus kicked them toward the same spot without any delicacy, piling them into a mountain.
Even the ones left hanging in the trees, wrapped in spiderwebs—he kicked them down and added them to the pile without a second thought.
Meanwhile, Inosuke watched the whole thing with his mouth hanging wide open.
And Marcus was different with one of the slayers.
She was young, she was conscious, and she was trembling like a leaf when Marcus cut the last threads off her.
Instead of kicking her in with the rest, he picked her up carefully, carrying her in his arms like a princess, and set her gently on top of the pile of bodies that now served as a mattress.
The girl stared at him with wide eyes, her breathing ragged and her heart still racing from the panic. Marcus caressed her cheek softly, and a thin pink breath flowed out.
Her heartbeat gradually began to calm.
"Easy... It's over now."
"HEY!"
Not letting the astonishment consume him, Inosuke jumped forward, his swords pointing at Marcus with indignation. "What are you doing kicking them around like that?! It took us forever to knock them— I mean, RESCUE them!"
"Shut up!"
Tanjiro, pale with fear, lunged at him and clamped his mouth shut, dragging him backward while whispering in his ear. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! Don't let yourself be fooled just because he's gentle with girls. With guys he has no mercy."
Inosuke struggled, but Tanjiro held the grip and took the chance to address Marcus. "Senpai, that's not going to work. We already tried—if you only cut the threads, they get back up."
Sheathing his sword, Marcus dissipated the pink mist around him. "You think I'm like you two? That I just cut the threads without going after the source?"
"The little spiders they have inside their bodies are what reconnect the threads. If you don't eliminate them, it doesn't matter how many times you cut. I eliminated them."
"..."
Tanjiro and Inosuke stared at the collapsed slayers.
Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty… And sure enough, not a single one moved.
Tanjiro blinked, impressed. But Inosuke crossed his arms and turned his head the other way. "All show."
Marcus glanced at him sideways, and Inosuke's hair stood on end again as he quickly dropped into a fighting stance.
Making Marcus's smile widen. "Don't just stand there. There are still more slayers scattered around. Bring them in."
"Got it!"
Tanjiro was already on his way. Inosuke watched him go, then looked at Marcus, then back at Tanjiro, clicked his tongue in annoyance, and went after him grumbling.
In a few minutes, five or six slayers—some unconscious, some dead—were piled up against a tree trunk, forming a small mountain.
Looking at the female slayer who was relatively unharmed, Marcus walked over.
"I need a favor." He smiled at her warmly. "Watch over them. Just make sure no spiders get close and they'll be fine. Can you do that?"
"D-Don't worry!" The girl nodded clumsily. "I can do it! Leave it to me!"
"I'm counting on you~"
"It's no trouble at all! Not one bit!!"
Nobody had said it was, but she felt the need to clarify anyway, her cheeks the color of a ripe tomato.
Tanjiro covered his face with his hand. 'Senpai never changes…'
"Good." Dusting off his hands, Marcus turned around and looked at both of them. "Now the three of us are going to find the demon behind all of this."
It wasn't that he particularly cared whether those slayers lived or died. He hadn't come to save anyone out of kindness. It was just that what he planned to do next... the more slayers alive, the less resistance there'd be…
"Hurry up," he added with a glint in his eyes. "I'm in a rush."
_____
Thank you for reading! 🙏
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