Demon Slayer : The Silent Journey-Chapter 180: Just like that..

[3rd POV]

The people flinched and ducked their heads as the sounds of battle surrounded the Central Hall of the Butterfly Mansion.

The sound of battle was intense, and it was the only sound, as everyone was too busy worrying to make a nose. The distant roar of explosions came from a mountain away, but it still reached their ears.

"Let me go! Woman!" Inosuke gritted out but Aoi held him down. She hugged him like a koala hugging a tree for dear life.

"No, you can't go," she said. For someone who was not a warrior, she was unbelievably stubborn. She was one of the few people who could out-stubborn Inosuke.

"Grrrrr!!" Inosuke just growled.

"She's right Inosuke, you were even more injured than me in our last mission. Even if you leave you wouldn't be of any help," Tanjiro, who had returned with Kanae, said.

"The Hashiras are fighting battles beyond our intervention. We will just be a weakness to them," he said. It sounded like he was spitting blood with each word with how difficult the sentence came out.

"Easy for you to say! After you had a battle! After you are able to help!" Inosuke said with gritted teeth but eventually, he calmed down.

What else could he do?

"You are needed here. There is barely anyone else who can fight, we need you to protect us if it comes to that," Aoi said. Inosuke silently processed her words before he gave a hard nod.

He could be like a wild beast but he also understood duty and responsibility.

The seconds passed as they stayed in the hall, waiting for the others to fight off the attack. They felt weak, they felt helpless. The only thing they could do was hope for the best.

*knock*

*knock*

*knock*

A knock could be heard from the entrance of the hall. Inosuke and the group were nearest to the door since they were the last to hide.

Aoi's natural reaction was to open the door for the person knocking but she was stopped by Tanjiro. His hand gripped her wrist and a sense of unease filled his eyes.

"Wait a minute Aoi-san," Tanjiro said while staring unblinking at the door, "Don't open the door,"

Aoi was speechless. She had never felt Tanjiro so serious before. But the knocking persisted.

Until eventually, a voice came.

It was the voice of a weak, desperate old man who seemed to be crying out for help. The tone struck the hearts of everyone in the silence.

"Please....Pleaseee.....If you don't let me in they are going to hurt me,"

On one hand was Tanjiro's warning, on another was the desperate call for help. In the end, Tanjiro himself was the one to open the lock and slide open the sturdy door.

His nose said the person was a demon, but his kind heart could not ignore the possibility of ignoring someone in need of help.

The door slid open and it revealed what everyone feared.

A demon.

"Please...Help me...Protect me," Hantengu all but begged with tears falling from his eyes.

"....."

*SWWWOSH!!*

The sound of shrieking steel could be heard. Kanao and Tanjiro moved fast but Insokue beat them to it as his chipped sword sliced at the demon.

The cut was not clean with the chipped sword. Inosuke literally just ripped the head off from the demon's shoulder. The spray of blood and gore coloured the face of the first Beast Breathing user.

Everyone watched as the head landed in the corridor with a thud while the body fell limply in its place. There was silence.

The scene left the people with tension. Was that it? Was that not a little too easy?

It gave the feeling of something unfinished, like looking at a bubbling egg before it was cooked.

Their feelings came true.

"What?!" Inosuke barked in surprise as the headless demon quickly regenerated.

No, it was not just regeneration. The demon multiplied. The body grew a head, and the head grew a body.

Their appearance changed too, it was subtle but obvious to the veteran warriors.

Their instincts screamed.

"Everybody brace!!!" Tanjiro screamed as the demon gently swung a leaf-fan.

Green energy exploded and the air became a weapon. The weaponized air roared like a beast with no master as a hurricane was created out of thin air.

The shockwave easily blasted apart the structure of the central hall. The woods tore against the invisible calamity and everyone was exposed to danger in one, unexpected explosion of force.

..

..

..

The less injured Demon Slayers immediately came to the front, helping people who were hurt. The splinters of wood had hurt many people, making them bleed into the ground.

In the open air, the people could finally see the demons that had surrounded them before they even realized it.

"Oh no...." Tanjiro's face fell, not in fear for himself but for others.

On the other hand, Kanao was already moving to kill the demons. The help had not come yet so they had to hold off the demons for now.

Inosuke was already engaging in a fight with the personalities of Hantengu but that would become more and more hopeless as the fight went on. For each part of the body sliced off, Hantengu multiplied like an amoeba.

Kanao swiped her sword swiftly with deadly speed and deadlier precision. She was expecting an easy cut, the scenario of the demon's head falling off already played in her mind.

But that was hopeful, way too hopeful.

With the numbers of the present demons and more coming their way, she was expecting them to be cannon fooders. But the random demon she chose was no low-level demon.

How did she know?

Well?

"You're a feisty one," the demon said while holding her sword between two fingers.

A nervous smile stretched her lips. With that first exchange, she could determine the strength of the demon.

Weaker than Kaigaku but not by much.

The demon was a high-ranking demon, only below the Twelve Kizuki. If it was before, the demon would be as strong as a bottom Lower Moon.

"Where are you big brother?" she asked with a helpless smile as another Demon launched her away like a ragdoll with an energy-infused fist.

The humans were overwhelmed.

..

..

..

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[3rd POV]

(Outside the Butterfly Compound)

"What the hell, these are impossible to cut through!!" a Hinoto-ranked Demon Slayer said while trying to cut through the silk that wrapped around the trees.

"They look like spider webs, but they are tougher than steel," another Demon Slayer beside him said. They had met each other while coming to the Mansion for help.

"It doesn't make sense! Where is the demon responsible for this damnit!!" he roared while swinging his nichirin blade. Sparks flew but it only resulted in a chipped sword.

The webs weaved a barrier around the compound, going from tree to tree to make it impossible to traverse the terrain. The webs were as tall as the trees and covered five meters of ground, so jumping over them was not an option.

"Let's try climbing on them," one of them said before he tore off a piece of cloth to use as a glove. The webs were thin and tough so they would easily cut through his skin without protection.

The demon slayer carefully climbed from one web to the other but before he made it high, there was a movement in the threads.

"Look out!!" the man on the ground screamed but it was too late. The webs turned red like blood and they moved like living snakes.

The webs now turned red, wrapped on the demon slayer's neck before squeezing it clean off. His headless body fell first followed by the thudding of his head.

"NOO!!"

Such a scene could be observed almost in every direction as the demon slayers tried but failed to penetrate the barrier of webs. If they were making progress, the webs would turn red and move to attack them.

Many lost their hand or feet while a few lost their lives.

The only way to get through it seemed to be by digging under the web. Some demon slayers were already trying to do just that but digging through the entire thing would take time. Heck, it might take the whole night.

The sound of destruction and distant screams that came from the mansion only frustrated them further. They were so close yet so far away.

*BOOOOOOOM*

"Damn it, even explosives are not working," one of the more experienced demon slayers, Kinoto ranked tried using the bomb he was carrying but to no avail. The webs were more like steel than actual organic matter.

Even guns didn't work. The Demon Slayer Corp had been incorporating modern weapons in their arsenal but none of them worked.

But the human spirit was hard to extinguish as they tried again and again. Even the people who lost a hand were not discouraged as they tried to penetrate through the barrier of webs.

"Where are you?!" Sanemi roared while running along the fence in search of the demon responsible for the webs.

He had tried bulldozing through the barrier, it almost worked but the webs just fixed themselves and reconnect before he could pass through.

It was not just him, the other Hashiras who had come here also searched for the demon.

It was a race against time.

.....

On the other hand, the perpetrator, Rui sat on top of a tree branch surrounded by his own webs. He had six arms, three on each side, and the sixty fingers on his hands were connected to a web.

He was feeling the vibrations of the webs he spun so although he was hiding in the thick vegetation, he could feel everything around him as if he was there. The struggling demon slayers sent vibrations that told him more than he needed, he could react to anything that threaten to penetrate the barrier.

No one shall get in.

Occasionally, he would sent his own blood through his webs for easier control and that ended in fatality for the demon slayers most of the time.

He also chose his position carefully to avoid being discovered. So he should be able to complete his mission without any hurdle.

At least that was the plan.

..

..

Until a pair of eyes locked on him.

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Through all the complex branches, through his shield of webs and through the darkness of the night, the eyes saw him. Almost too easily, as if the world could not hide anything from the eyes, almost as if the world always bore naked truth to them.

"Hmmm?"

A sound, a really weird sound that activated goosebumps he thought he no longer had.

It sounded like a click, iron hitting iron, a sonar from a huge submarine.

The demon did not know exactly what the sound was but it was making every demonic instinct in him scream. It was akin to the same distress he felt under the sun.

"Come out," Rui said with narrowed eyes. He tugged at his webs, trying to locate the eyes that continued gazing at him even now, stripping him of every mask he thought he had and peering at his real self.

But Rui never found the source of the gaze, because unbelievably the eyes were outside of his own range of webs. How they could see him from such distance was a miracle.

Anohter second passed, the sound of clicking stoped. Rui looked ahead and caught the glimpse of purple. The two dots of eerie purple were very far, at least a kilometer away from him. Rui could barley see the light with his heightened vision.

Rui felt relieved when he saw that the gaze came from a kilometre away, giving him enough time to react in case of an attack.

..

..

One second.

And just like that the purple was in front of him.

"!!!!!!!!"

Rui could never hope to react to such speed. The world itself had never seen such speed over a distace, only after the invention of fighter jets would any other human achieve the same speed.

Rui froze like a statue as the purple passed him. The only thing he felt was vibration and then the colour passed like a nightmare.

..

..

Nothing.

For a solid five seconds that felt like an eternity, nothing happened to Rui. He thought he was dead, his body froze up completely, and all bodily functions had paused. He was not breathing, and even his heart was not beating.

But perhaps he was wrong. His heart felt relieved at such a thought.

It was only at the first beat of his heart, the first draw of breath, that Rui fell apart.

His beating heart was sliced into pieces, and so was his lungs. The pain caused a jolt in his body, his leg fell apart first and it travelled up his body like a contagious disease. Each movement peeled away another piece of himself.

The damage continued with every twitch of muscle until the pain became unbearable. Rui opened his mouth to scream but his scream never came as the movement caused his head to fall apart into thinly sliced sheets.

The last thing he remembered was the name of the attack carried by the wind.

"Hesitation's demise,"

..

..

Rui, one of the proud Twelve Moon Demons. He thought he was something to be feared after absorbing that much of Muzan's blood.

Yet he died like a common demon.

Just like that?

Indeed, just like that.

..

..

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