The eyes.
These feather-shapes were extensions of the living entity she wore, and the eyes were where all their power lived. Destroy the eye, destroy the blade. He'd found the weakness.
But before he could feel any satisfaction, she'd already changed her approach. A sixth blade appearing from nowhere?
Looking back at the fifth blade — the one he'd just finished dealing with — Muzan caught a glimpse: a strange, ring-shaped wave-pattern, fading from its eye. As if...
She could teleport Feather Blades through each other's eyes. Across space.
—!
Muzan's entire worldview lurched. He'd read every myth, every record of impossible power the West had to offer — and he'd genuinely never imagined something like this could exist. A power out of Western legend, made real.
There was no longer any doubt: Inori's blood, her origin, her entire classification, was in a tier completely above his. When he'd first become a demon, all he'd gained was an unusually strong body. Nothing like this. And he still couldn't stand in sunlight.
Damn it. If I could only find the Blue Spider Lily... I too could become this kind of perfect being.
—Wait...
His mind shot back to the Heian Period. The disease. The renowned physician's drug — incomplete, the side effects making him think his condition was worsening, so he'd killed the doctor in a fit of paranoid rage. Later he'd discovered the drug had worked: his illness was gone, his body stronger than any human's, but it craved flesh and blood and could not endure sunlight. People called him a demon. He'd eventually accepted the name.
But was he truly a demon? Not exactly. Even he had never fully known what he became after swallowing that drug.
The missing piece had always been the Blue Spider Lily.
—Could it be... she too is...
It finally landed. The same conclusion, from a different direction. She was like him — an unknown creature that, for reasons of its own, could no longer be human. Another existence with Tainted Blood. Not a mutant demon. Another Muzan.
"Did you obtain... that thing?"
The arm still hadn't finished regrowing. He didn't care.
"What?"
Inori had no idea what had just moved behind Muzan's eyes. She only knew his reaction was disproportionate.
We're in a fight. Why do you keep asking questions?
Muzan couldn't even bring himself to focus on regrowing his arm. He was shaken, deeply — again. Overcoming sunlight alone was one thing, but the sheer variety and strangeness of her power... how could he not be envious? He had paid a thousand-year price for his current strength, had even come within a breath of being killed. And this girl had done nothing special — she'd simply arrived, and surpassed him entirely. The psychological gap was unbearable. The shame was worse.
"You found it, didn't you — the Blue Spider Lily! Who gave it to you? Where? How did you get it?!"
"...I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about."
Inori swept her remaining seven blades into a spread formation, ready for the next exchange.
"Keep losing focus and I'll kill you, Kibutsuji Muzan."
"...heh heh. Hahahahaha! Hahahahahaha!"
Kibutsuji Muzan threw his head back and laughed — loud, unhinged, an ugly sound that nonetheless expressed exactly what was happening inside him.
"?"
Inori narrowed her eyes. Her expression stalled for just a moment.
If this were a manga panel she'd be covered in question marks. She genuinely couldn't parse what he was doing. Probably, her Inner Eye spatial transfer had triggered some internal narrative he was filling in on his own.
Blue Spider Lily. She vaguely knew spider lilies — but white ones were also rare in Japan, weren't they? They originated from the Yangtze basin in China, if she remembered correctly. She didn't know flowers particularly well. As for a blue spider lily — she'd never heard of such a thing in her life.
"All I have to do is bring you back... and I'll have everything I've ever wanted!"
The laughter stopped cold.
His bloodshot eyes burned with a hunger that hadn't been there before — mingled want and frenzy, something entirely new. He had to have her.
"You are the answer to a thousand years of searching!"
The Blue Spider Lily. A complete being, standing right in front of him. All he had to do was defeat her. How could Kibutsuji Muzan not go mad over this?
He no longer needed to hide anything.
That lean frame began to change. Muscles swelled beneath the skin. His body erupted in those massive toothed maws, rows of fangs multiplying across every surface. Wild, beast-like fur swallowed his lower body. His black hair shot outward in every direction, multiplied tenfold — and turned white. A white-maned demon stood under the moon, releasing every ounce of his demonic power.
This was Kibutsuji Muzan's Complete Form.
"..."
Something in the wind reached Inori and tasted of danger.
She didn't panic. She met it.
Muzan wasn't defending anymore. He launched at impossible speed — and this time, Inori's body couldn't catch up.
She'd been adapting to him. But this wasn't the same Muzan. She had a fraction of a second to understand this before he was already in her face, and then his entire arm dissolved into a mist of red flesh and reformed: a crimson, pulsing Barbed Whip, alien and writhing.
—I can't dodge this.
She couldn't even raise her hands in time. The Barbed Whip punched straight through her abdomen, hoisting her into the air. Muzan shrieked — not a shout but a screech of triumph, eyes rolled to white. This was the Progenitor of Demons. This was Kibutsuji Muzan.
He flung her away. But the girl didn't hit the ground. She corrected mid-air, spinning once, and landed on unsteady but standing feet.
"Hmph. You could have led with that, you know."
Inori's eyes stayed fixed on Muzan, lips pressed together. She pressed one hand to the wound, scooped out the mass of blood pooling there, and wiped it away. Beneath: new skin, already healed.
"I'll have you, woman... I'll unravel every secret in your body!"
Muzan surged forward again. The skin of his back split open — and out came the tentacles. Each one ended in bone spikes with razor-sharp tips, and he'd shifted into something resembling obsession. Physically speaking, he was interested in her body — in the most literal, metabolic sense. He seemed genuinely convinced that consuming her would give him immunity to sunlight.
"—!"
Without pausing, Muzan swept both arms in, and every Bone-Spike Tentacle on his back lashed out simultaneously. The disparity between them was enormous. She should have been torn apart in an instant.
Inori had been ready. She caught the trajectories, and immediately released every available Feather Blade in a counter-strike — intending to redirect the tentacles with their force.
Crack.
What followed dropped the temperature in her chest.
The bone-spikes pivoted mid-flight. Each one locked onto the open eye in each Feather Blade and struck with surgical precision. The eyes died, and the blades went still — one after another, broken wings.
—That's insane precision, what the—!
The Red Feather Blades were finished.
Inori didn't let it show. She'd planned for this. She'd imagined every worst case before committing. She didn't know what Muzan could do, so she'd already decided what came after.
She stepped forward into the danger, sleeves cutting through the air around her — and from within that motion, gold blazed into being. She leveled it at Kibutsuji Muzan and fired.
The Golden Feather Blade.
—Erase his time.