"Ora ora ora ora!!"
A creature with no mouth, producing that battle cry. If Muzan had any capacity left to notice absurdity, it wasn't available to him right now — King Crimson's liquid iron fists were hammering his face.
The body was obviously composed of blood — his tentacles passed straight through without catching, which made those fists impacting his face with such tremendous force all the more baffling. Each blow carried crushing penetrative power and searing heat, as though molten rock were being driven into him. And once the barrage started, it drew you in deeper — faster, more inescapable — like a whirlpool tightening with every exchange until deflection became impossible. This creature's proficiency with this attack pattern was unmistakable.
"Enough!"
Kibutsuji Muzan roared. He concentrated all force into his arm-blades and slashed out in every direction at once — hundreds of cuts in an instant — reducing the scarlet blood monster before him to countless fragments. The relentless fists stopped. Muzan seized the break and retreated.
The fragments reconvened immediately.
Kibutsuji Muzan's power set was, at its core, simple: overwhelming regeneration, extendable blade-arms, bone-spike tentacles, extreme speed matched to brutal force. A pure physical attacker. No frills.
And pure physical force could not harm a Stand with no solid body.
If Inori were a normal human, Muzan could have laced his attacks with blood capable of destroying human cells. But as things stood, warding off the blood toxin she'd already delivered was consuming his full attention — let alone launching his own offensively. And his incomplete blood would have no effect on Inori regardless.
To defeat this woman, something unconventional was needed. Both sides had long since passed the point of holding anything back — she was genuinely trying to kill him, and Muzan was desperate to capture her and find a way to overcome sunlight.
For all his centuries, Kibutsuji Muzan had never been pushed this far by anyone who wasn't a sword-wielder. No one outside of that one man — the one who had truly been a monster — had ever dominated him in single combat like this.
But his regeneration remained. As long as it wasn't that man's Red Blade, nothing in the world could stop it. Even Inori had to physically deliver her blood toxin into his tissue to make it work.
But that had been the Inori of before.
Muzan's face had been ravaged. The burning blood from King Crimson's barrage had overwhelmed his outer skin — scalding it red, raising blisters, rearranging his formerly decent features into something unrecognizable. He tried to heal, and found the recovery rate disconcertingly sluggish. Not as absolute as sunlight. Nothing like that man's Red Blade. But the burning blood was suppressing his regeneration all the same.
Something cold settled in his chest.
It recalled a scene from long ago — Tsugikuni Yoriichi's Red Blade, pinning down his regeneration for the first time in his life. The first moment he had ever felt this helpless before an enemy. And the lesson drawn from it:
The moment his self-healing began to fail — that was the announcement of his own defeat.
"How many brains do you have left, Kibutsuji Muzan?"
The black-feathered girl hovered at low altitude, bare feet hanging in the air as though the ground held no appeal for her. The scarlet blood monster readied itself beside her.
In terms of blood toxin, Inori's potency vastly outranked his own. Muzan knew this well, and it put him at a severe disadvantage. But the split form she was operating in now offered one other possibility.
Find a way past the blood monster and strike her physical body directly.
She could regenerate, but not at his level. Not instant full-body recovery. That was the only path left.
Muzan was frightened now. He knew that if this next attack failed, she would very likely kill him. Knowing that, he began preparing his last resort.
Self-division.
"UAAAAHHHH!!"
Muzan unleashed a frenzied, bloodcurdling roar and charged — arm-blades extended and swinging — every inch the performance of a creature making its final desperate stand. He intended to use this charge as misdirection: make Inori believe he was throwing himself into a death rush.
Bloodied fur, bloodied skin, white hair matted with gore — Muzan descended like a wounded lion with nothing left to lose. The oppressive aura that rolled off him was suffocating. Inori didn't move. She let King Crimson step forward to meet him.
Muzan threw himself fully into the assault — arm-blades whipping in every direction, bone-spike tentacles joining the storm — creating a razor wall within several meters of himself. Whatever passed through that zone was reduced to rubble; the ground came apart beneath it.
It defied imagination, what level an ordinary human would have to reach before they could hope to face something like this. That thought carried weight when you considered a Demon Slayer Corps member like Kocho Kanae.
In this form, trying to close in with a liquid body meant being shredded instantly. Even if fists connected, they'd land without force. King Crimson's gaze sharpened. From across its entire frame, blood erupted in violent crimson light, and the flowing liquid stilled.
King Crimson concentrated its entire body into a uniform high-density solid — the full heat of its burning blood behind it: like molten iron drawn from a sword-forge. Muzan's blades skimmed its surface and bounced away. That density absorbed every impact without giving.
He finally understood what it meant to be outclassed.
"Ora ora ora ora!!"
King Crimson charged like a lava-drenched bull — straight through Muzan's blade wall, crashing against his face, fists already moving. Muzan gritted his teeth and pulled the blades back to block.
The impacts came like rainfall — blade against fist, fist against blade, without end. Muzan's strength was clearly a full tier below King Crimson's; he was being driven back step by step, speed barely keeping pace. But this was precisely why he craved Inori's blood so desperately.
Research it. Synthesize something that neutralizes the toxicity but preserves the properties. That would be the key to overcoming sunlight.
Muzan drew a breath. While trading blows with King Crimson, he quietly distributed his remaining three brains into three bone-spike tentacles, separated those tentacles from his body, and sent them wide — silent, unnoticed beneath the thunderous exchange. They had flanked around behind the black-feathered girl. Position confirmed.
The tentacles dropped from the great tree behind her — descending from above, straight toward the top of her head. His final killing blow. Her split-off form was occupied. A few Feather Blades couldn't stop bone spikes.
She was finished.
—The master of this dark night — that is me. Victory is mine!