Demon Slayer : The Silent Journey

[Seiji's POV]

The battle raged on and I was completely detached from reality.

Sparse flakes of snow fell from the dark sky, showing that the temperature was below freezing yet I felt my body burning up. It was too hot.

The surroundings were a map of destruction. The earth had multiple craters, along with deep cracks akin to a cobweb and a deep line, which was a scar left by the swing of my sword. And yet, I had never felt calmer. My mind, my body, and my spirit were in synch during the fight.

There was a fine line between life and death, and only a few people had been on that line and survived to tell the tale. I fought on that line, Muzan's tendrils blurred past my body, and the sharp wind from the action was like a blade in it of itself. For the first time in my life, my eyes were not all-seeing, I was not sure if the blades missed or if they had cut an artery and I was to bleed out and die soon.

Yet there was not a single scratch on me. Not yet. I thrived on the line between life and death.

I switched between breathing styles like switching between thoughts. I used what best suited me at the moment and what was the most efficient. My brain allowed me to do that. I was like a machine controlled by the most advanced AI—deadly and efficient.

The level of skill and mastery I displayed were miles apart from Muzan's. It was proportionate to our gap in raw power.

I had complete trust in my ability and I had no one to save except for myself. So in a way, it was less intense than the fight I had with Douma but in no way was this battle less uphill.

It was silent. Awfully so.

And in the intensity of our fight where the ground opened up and trees fell like matchsticks, the silence had never been more obvious.

I felt awfully lonely as I danced a dance of death with Muzan, playing at the front door of death.

But not for long.

I smiled and my eyes flashed a deep purple when I saw him running straight towards us from a distance.

"Hmmmmm? Is there something I am missing? What's so funny?" Muzan said while his tendrils continued battering me from every direction.

My sword was only a blur and my arms had disappeared as I blocked all attacks. I increased the intensity of my movement and stopped steppinhg back.

I held my ground.

The Demon Slayer mark on my body grew and covered more skin. I could feel my body pulling out unknown strength from them like magic. I guess it was true that Demon Slayer marks were spells, like Blood Demon arts, they were supernatural.

Burning lifespan for power.

The battle grew fiercer and more destructive as I met every single attack with my blade. The battle was going to reach a new realm but then Muzan stopped.

The stop was so abrupt that I felt my body groan in pain when the strain disappeared.

"Haa....haa...haa...." I used Sun Breathing to recover my stamina but I never dropped my stance. I pulled my sword up to my chest, always ready to swing down upon Muzan.

"That is...familiar," Muzan muttered and right then, I also took notice of my sword.

My sword used to match the colour of my eyes, shining with a deep purple colour. But that colour had changed.

What I held in my hand was not a purple blade but a blade that was deep red. It was the colour of human blood.

I blinked my eyes in surprise. The sword even started releasing smoke as it interacted with the freezing atmosphere.

It was heat. The constant clash of my sword with his attacks had produced enough friction that my sword was burning deep red.

"Time and time again you have been reminding me of that man. Perhaps you are a descendant of his but no matter," Muzan said, more to himself than he did to me.

"Even if that man came crawling out from his grave, it doesn't matter. I am not like what I used to be, I have grown in strength and power. I am stronger now than I was back then," he said.

I hummed uncaringly. I did notice minimal thoughts and training in his fighting style but that was negligible. Maybe the growth he was mentioning was due to growing stronger from consuming humans or by age,

"That is quite enough, I will end it now," he said and then his hair grew. His height became taller and his muscles grew and shrunk down again to be more compact

I saw his eyes become even more demonic and his teeth became sharp and ready to tear flesh.

My instincts blared at me. Muzan had finally entered what I assumed was his final transformation. More tendrils grew from his back and they surrounded him like living snakes with a blade for a head.

He crouched down and load his legs like a spring and that was all I needed to react.

"Volcanic Breathing : First Form," Muzan foretold his action so I had more than enough time to reply. I threw speed out of the window since I moved before he did and only focused on raw strength.

"Molten Divide!!!"

A flicker.

Muzan teleported in front of me, his tendrils were still on his back, ready to make a million holes in me. But the main attack was his hand which had turned into a blade through flesh manipulation.

I guess he got overconfident at his increase in power.

It was like swatting a fly. The moment Muzan was in front of me I brought my sword down and divided him in half.

My blade glowed red in heat and raw power. Muzan's body did not protest as I split him apart like wood. My sword went on to divide the earth, it was like a rift to the underworld suddenly opened as the ground shook violently.

*BOOOOM!!!*

He couldn't even scream. I noticed this time with the help of my red blade that Muzan could not regenerate immediately. It gave me time to deliver more attacks but my body protested.

Every fibre of my muscles felt like they had snapped and I couldn't even pull my sword out of the ground. And that was when I knew I might have made a mistake.

The earth was relatively soft most of the time with the level of strength I had. I could form craters on the earth and face no significant problems. But that was different in winter.

The ground was frozen. The ice particles bind the earth together so when my sword was lodged in the earth, it remained stuck and my exhausted body could not pull it out.

!!!!!

I did not want to admit it, but maybe Muzan outsmarted me with this one. Just like how his action was predictable when he loaded up his leg, my action was predictable when I held my sword to my chest. The only attack would surely be to swing down.

I also noticed that his five brans and seven hearts were perfectly fine in his split body. Not only that, the multiple brains and hearts allowed his separated body to move like two entities.

The tentacles on his back moved like snakes and they wrapped the body which was sliced in the middle. They bound the body together like a rope so that Muzan could heal more easily.

A nasty strategy that included him being cut in half. No other demon had the ability nor insanity to pull off such action.

I reacted immediately, in panic, believing his sword arm would stab me in my stomach. I abandoned my sword and pulled back my abdomen in a way that my body curved like an opposite C.

But the stabbing motion never came. Instead, his other hand shot up like a cobra striking at its prey.

His hand found my eyes. I felt a chill run down my spine even though my body-heat was beyond supernatural.

...

...

Perhaps the battle had taken a toll on me, more than I thought. Or maybe I had lowered my guard when I saw reinforcement reach the forest.

I had made a mistake when it mattered the most.

I screamed.

And the world grew dark.

Darkness and silence.

...

..

..

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[3rd POV]

Muzan violently slammed his palm on Seiji, knocking the human's head with such force that it rattled his brain and fell unconscious immediately.

The vilest grin spread across Muzan's split face. It was distorted and grotesque beyond description.

And then, right as he was about to use his blood demon art and destroy the annoying purple eyes of the human, he lost connection.

His nerves lost a connection with his hand.

*Pssst!!*

The sharpest sound quickly reached his ears because he was so close. His eyes widened and he was stupefied when he saw a red line appear on his wrist and his hand fell off.

When his hand stopped covering Seiji's eyes, Muzan was greeted with the chilling sight of purple eyes gazing at him. This time, there was no soul on those purple orbs.

There was no intensity, no hatred, just cold and calculating like some kind of a computer. He realized then that the human was unconscious but his body had moved on its own.

Muzan quickly collected himself and tried to understand what just happened. Seiji's sword was stuck so how did he cut him?

It was then that Muzan saw the shard of the bone blade on Seiji's hand. He looked at his right arm which he had turned into a blade and he noticed the broken tip where the shard was supposed to connect.

The human broke the tip of his own blade and used the small shard of a blade to cut off his hand.

Muzan cursed. It had taken him long to come up with that plan. He had learned a lot from the fight, or to be more specific, he learned a lot from Seiji. Muzan learned from the way Seiji predicted and recognized patterns.

Muzan had set up the whole thing through effort, catching Seiji off guard but it seemed that he got lucky this time.

Shortly after, the purple eyes gained light once more. Muzan was about to launch another attack right then but he could not react as everything turned black for him too.

His head disappeared, reduced to pink mist as it was smashed by a giant flail moving even faster than the speed of sound.

His body was still separated in the middle, only his tendrils held his body in one piece and he lacked a head. But even so, Muzan thought that maybe humans were not so harmless.

..

..

[IMAGE]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author : Thanks for reading