The Red Feather Blades were effortlessly countered by Muzan's Complete Form.
Numbers were the problem. Ten times as many, a hundred times — only that kind of volume could have any hope of overwhelming a body that could simply impale her Inner Eyes with its tentacles before they found their marks.
What she had was nowhere near enough.
Absorbing those legacy bones had transformed King Crimson from a conventional Stand into an item-type Stand and elevated it to ACT2 — the Nameless Monster. For Inori, that transformation had been a nerf, not an upgrade.
Time Erasure and Future Prediction, her two most powerful abilities, were locked. She had gained immortality, yes, something that surpassed ordinary human limits — but even so, she kept coming back to the same calculation: a normal human with a rule-level Stand would still be stronger. And in her normal human state, she had possessed one other divine technique: The Future Yet to Come — the power to rewrite reality.
Now, both types of Feather Blades far outstripped the old King Crimson in firepower and range, but the price was brutal. The Gold Feather Blade could erase the flow of time from a single target — but not consecutively. Time Erasure's scope had shrunk from the entire world to one body, and the cooldown had grown longer, not shorter. For Inori, this was a crippling blow, as if someone had severed a major artery and turned King Crimson into an invalid overnight.
So much surrendered for nothing except an immortal body beyond human limits. If that was all, this exchange had been highway robbery. The Nameless Monster had to have hidden capabilities she hadn't yet discovered.
That could wait. The enemy in front of her first.
A gold Feather Blade shot from her fingertips. Muzan's response was instinctive — a bone-spike tentacle snapped up to impale it — but by the time he registered the blade's peculiar color, it was too late.
The Gold Feather Blade clashed with a weapon Muzan had extended from his arm. A ring of invisible force rippled outward from Muzan at its center, spreading through the air like a water drop falling into a still lake — and for the next few seconds, time on Muzan's body would be erased.
Barbed whips lined his arms. Bone-spike tentacles bristled across his back. Muzan's face twisted in a snarl as he stared straight ahead, completely unaware of Inori slipping around behind him. He couldn't perceive it. Couldn't even register that anything was happening.
Inori drew a slow breath. She reached into her feathers, pinched a single Red Feather Blade between her fingers, and drove it into the back of his skull like a dagger.
By all rights this should have scattered brain matter in every direction. Inori had braced herself for it. Instead the wound produced only a token welling of blood.
Muzan's brain. Less responsive than expected.
No matter — a headshot alone wasn't enough. To prevent regeneration or worse, Inori immediately flooded the buried blade with blood toxin. Even after he recovered consciousness, this wouldn't be reversible.
—I won!
The Gold Feather Blade's effect ended.
Kibutsuji Muzan would have struggled to describe what had happened to him in those few seconds. The moment he destroyed that gold blade, Inori simply vanished from his perception — not speed, but complete erasure from his awareness. More damning: in the same instant his skull had started feeling like a pot of boiling water, churning bubbles from the inside out, and he staggered.
He understood. That woman had caved in his head.
But — how? What had that differently colored feather done?
"You lose, Kibutsuji Muzan!"
—The sovereign is me — INORI. That has never changed!
The pink-haired girl stood her ground, watching him with calm triumph. He would be dead soon enough — his brain contaminated by her blood toxin. Nichirin Swords and sunlight could kill demons. So could the blood of a higher being.
"Hm." Muzan trembled as he turned, his hand simultaneously finding the blade lodged in his skull and yanking it free — then locating the Inner Eye and crushing it in his fist. "Getting hit by that golden feather seems quite unpleasant. Some kind of hallucinatory effect?"
Only Kibutsuji Muzan's Complete Form had the raw strength to physically destroy a Feather Blade like that.
It wouldn't help him. Inori had already delivered more than enough blood toxin into his brain — every cell in that skull was beyond repair.
"Did you really think a simple ambush would work on me?"
He smiled. Then he did something extraordinary.
He punched in his own skull.
The top of his head caved open, exposing the discolored brain beneath. He reached in with both hands, stripped away every contaminated section of tissue, produced a fresh brain from somewhere in his abdomen, set it neatly into the empty cavity, and sealed bone and scalp back into place.
Everything restored. All of Inori's work with the Gold Feather Blade — gone.
—Why does he have a spare brain in his stomach? Would anyone like to explain that?
"Did you think I only have one head?"
Kibutsuji Muzan closed his eyes for a moment, letting the new brain orient itself, then smiled.
"Five brains. Seven hearts. That is my body. You just destroyed one — but I won't be touching that golden feather of yours again. So tell me, Inori: how exactly do you plan to locate and cut through each of my remaining organs, under these conditions?"
Conventional attacks were useless — Muzan could undo any wound in an instant; severed arms grew back immediately. The only way Inori had been able to suppress his regeneration was by poisoning his brain directly.
But the Gold Feather Blade's next charge was still far off. And with Muzan on full alert, repeating the trick was another matter entirely.
"You really are the Progenitor of Demons."
Inori exhaled, brows falling. The pressure settling onto her now was unlike anything she'd felt before.
She might actually lose this.
Every skill spent. The Feather Blades she could summon were dangerously limited — and Muzan's bone-spike tentacles had proven perfectly suited to destroying them. How was she supposed to keep fighting?
She might not be killable. But she couldn't kill him either.
—What happens if I lose? Taken back to a lab somewhere? Subjected to all sorts of horrible procedures, slowly turned into his test subject for overcoming sunlight?
No. Not yet.
—Inori-chan.
She heard Mana's voice just as she was reaching her limit.
Ouma Mana had gone quiet a long time ago — she'd barely spoken since Zenitsu arrived at the Butterfly Mansion. That was just how she was: one moment buzzing around like a hyperactive child, the next going radio-silent for days, utterly withdrawn from the world.
—Do you think you're a monster?
Something shifted. The sound of her own heartbeat rang clear in her ear. Inori's awareness drifted, as if she'd sunk into a secluded pond sealed off from everything — Muzan's voice, the ambient sounds of the clearing, all of it fading to nothing.
She closed her eyes. Hands moved across her body — not decent about it at all — traveling freely, before eventually wrapping around her waist from behind and pulling her close.
—I was once called a monster by my little brother. Do you remember?
What was Mana talking about? These past few days — had she found something strange in Inori's memories?
—But if you're a monster too... you should be even stronger than me.
—Cast aside the idea of being human. Become a truly nameless thing. Inori-chan — you can do it. This monster's power is far beyond what either of us can imagine.
Goosebumps traveled across Inori's skin. The arms holding her fell away. Her mind filled suddenly with memories that weren't hers — knowledge of a certain form, and how to use it.
Darkness swallowed her crimson eyes.
Inori's body sank into the Blood Well.
—Awaken, Nameless King.