But the attacking tongue was severed before it could reach Sukuna. A cut mark also appeared on the ground beside it.
"Aaaaagh!" The crawling demon howled in pain as the severed end of his tongue began rapidly writhing and regenerating.
Watching this, Sukuna muttered, "Almost forgot. Things like you aren't so easy to kill. That's why you can act so arrogant."
As he spoke, Sukuna drew his Nichirin blade and beheaded the crawling demon on the spot. He could not be bothered to waste more words on a small fry like this.
Unlike being cut bydismantle, the moment the demon was struck by the Nichirin blade, he died before Sukuna's eyes.
Even Sukuna had to admit that for killing demons, the Nichirin blade was far more convenient than his technique.
But Sukuna knew this was not over. The crawling demon had no drum-related items on him, nor had he used any spatial Blood Demon Art. That meant there had to be other demons here.
Since he heard no more drum sounds for now, and his surroundings had not shifted again, Sukuna left some residual cursed energy as a marker and walked out of the room to explore.
He could have destroyed the entire house instantly by expanding Malevolent Shrine, but he was not in that much of a rush. A little exercise would help pass the time.
He had not gone far when, through a series of door gaps, he spotted a boy kneeling in a distant room. The boy seemed to be holding a drum.
Sukuna instinctively connected the drum sounds and the Blood Demon Art to the drum in the boy's hands. But the boy appeared to be an ordinary human. Could he also use a Blood Demon Art?
Or was the drum itself the vessel for the Blood Demon Art?
Or perhaps it was not a Blood Demon Art at all, but some other technique?
"Hey, that drum in your hand—"
The moment Sukuna started walking over to investigate, the boy noticed him. He was startled by Sukuna's four-eyed appearance and frantically began pounding on the drum.
Sukuna's position shifted repeatedly, teleporting several times in quick succession. It pissed him off.
This gave him a similar feeling to when he had fought Aoi todo!
Just then, an extremely obese demon stepped out from a corner. He looked at Sukuna in confusion. "Why do you have two pairs of eyes? I thought you were a lively human for a second. Hmm? No, you're not a demon, are you?"
With a brief view, the obese demon realized something was off about Sukuna.
But that no longer mattered. After confirming there were no numbers in this demon's eyes, Sukuna took out his irritation from being randomly teleported by the boy on this obese demon.
He appeared before the demon in an instant. Before the demon could react, Sukuna used Third Form: Blazing Universe to slash the obese body cleanly in two. Blood, organs, and grease sprayed in all directions.
But killing one piece of small-fry trash demon like this did nothing to quell Sukuna's rage.
By sensing the residual cursed energy markers he had left behind, Sukuna noticed that his teleported positions all seemed to revolve around a particular room.
The answer was obvious. The room deliberately avoided by the Blood Demon Art was almost certainly where the boy was.
Sukuna chose the simplest solution. He aimed in that direction and fired off a slash. If the boy died, he was just an ordinary human, and the real Blood Demon Art user was someone else. If the boy did not die, then the brat was a demon himself, and his ordinary human appearance was merely a disguise.
After roughly confirming the boy's height, Sukuna slashed straight through the wall. It precisely severed the boy's head while he was still in a state of terror.
The small head rolled to the ground and landed beside the drum, producing one final sound.
But that final moment of the boy's life was witnessed by Shinobu, who had just been teleported into the adjacent room.
She had first noticed the boy's brown jacket and felt a glimmer of relief. The children's brother was still alive. If she could get him out, he could be reunited with his family. Then came this scene of utter despair.
Confirming that the drum sounds had stopped, Sukuna cut through the wall and walked toward the boy's headless corpse.
Ignoring Shinobu, who stood there pale-faced, he walked straight to the body and picked up the bloodstained drum.
The keen sense of smell in Sukuna's current body kicked in automatically. He smelled something on this drum that was completely different from the crawling demon and the obese demon. That meant there was a third demon here. The true master of this spatial Blood Demon Art.
Sukuna tapped the drumhead with his sword hilt. The adjacent room immediately underwent a spatial shift. He tossed the drum to Shinobu and asked, "I thought Blood Demon Arts could only create objects. I didn't know that created objects could also carry the effects of a Blood Demon Art."
Shinobu looked down at the bloodstained drum in her hands. She took a few deep breaths, trying not to think about how she would explain this boy's death to his siblings. She answered as calmly as she could manage. "It depends on the strength of the demon's Blood Demon Art. If the demon is powerful enough, theoretically, objects created by their Blood Demon Art can persist even after their death."
Sukuna looked at the drum and had a new thought. "If things like this are so convenient, and even a child can use them." He kicked the headless corpse on the floor. "Then why don't you just capture some demons or cooperate with them? Seems far more useful than your Breathing techniques."
Shinobu could tell from Sukuna's expression that the boy's death was already completely out of his mind. To him, it was like casually crushing an ant on the roadside.
"That is impossible! Cooperating with demons would expose our location!" Shinobu refuted firmly.
"Fair point. That is Muzan's ability after all. So does that mean this demon is relatively strong?" Sukuna found himself looking forward to facing this next demon a bit more.
Speak of the devil. Kyogai, the former Lower Rank Six, the Drum Demon, followed the scent of the rare blood from the boy Sukuna had just killed and arrived at this location.
"Why do you ignorant fools always barge into my—"
Kyogai was about to continue cursing when he noticed the headless body of the boy.
"Damn it! That was my prey! How dare you touch him!"
Sukuna barely registered Kyogai's words. All his attention was on the eyes of this new demon. In one eye was the character for Lower Rank, and below it, the number Six.
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