NOVEL NEXT Time skip (1)
[Seiji's POV]
(1 month passed)
My journey continued after I separated from Giyu. It was weird at first - not having a companion in my missions - but Raven made sure I was never lonely.
What I did while I was on missions was training Water Breathing like crazy. I wanted to master it to perfection like Giyu does since it was a style that best suited my fighting style.
I mostly used Water Breathing while I slew demons as well and with each passing day, I was getting better and better.
During this time, I also ran into Rengoku again much to my absolute joy. He was as high-spirited as the last time I'd seen him and he was incredibly to see me too.
He congratulated me on my quick ascension to the rank of Hashira and expressed his admiration. My eyes saw not a hint of envy or jealousy on his face even though he clearly wanted to climb the rank as well, which made me like him more.
Rengoku himself was making progress in climbing the ranks as he had become 'Kanoe' rank. My eyes could see that he was getting stronger than the last time we met as well.
We grabbed food and drink and spent the whole day chatting. We shared stories of our travels and he was especially curious about how I climbed the rank so quickly and how his father was during Hashira meetings.
He also has had many adventures that have made him grow in both strength and character. I was glad he had a relatively safe time but I also warned him about the strength of the Lower Moons and although I knew he wouldn't take the advice, I told him to prioritize his safety if he encountered one.
He simply laughed and did not promise anything.
We stuck together for as long as we could and we trained a lot together. I helped him refine his sword skills and he shared his unwavering motivation with me. I was glad to have met my friend again.
In the end, we parted ways and planned to keep in touch using our Kusagai crows to send letters.
Other than meeting Rengoku, nothing significant happened during the month.
..
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(2 month later)
A Hashira meeting was called and every pillar gathered in the headquarters. No one was late or absent.
I had never attended a Hashira meeting before so I was quite excited at the prospect. The meeting basically consists of briefings and statistical reports.
Each Hashira shared their experience in their missions and every significant encounter they have had. Some of them were,
1. Shinjuro encountered a lower moon but it managed to escape before he could slay it.
2. Kanae reported about a demon that had a rather troublesome blood demon art, spreading diseases. She brought up the importance of medicine and vaccines in the Demon Salyer Corp and asked Ubuyashiki to give her resources to improve the medical teams of the Flower Mansion.
3. Gyomei brought up an issue of the increasing groups of demons. With the emergence of four Hashiras - Kanae, Giyu, Sanemi and me - the demons were being hunted more than ever and they resorted to living more in groups compared to the past years. He said this could be dangerous for the lower rank demon slayers so he proposed the idea of more group missions instead of individual missions for thier safety.
Other than these three, the rest of the Hashiras did not have important things to share.
Then we went over the statistics. There were a total of 21 deaths in the Demon Slayer Corps which was a massive loss for just three months. There had been an increase in the death rates and the cause could be directly traced back to what Gyomei had said.
There was also a report on all of the demons slayed by the Hashiras and the amount of missions completed. Suffice it to say, I was the one with the most missions completed while Sanemi was the one with the most kill count.
The moment that was revealed, I immediately felt a spark of rivalry with Sanemi. We both had the advantage, he had his special blood which can attract demons and I had my eyes which allowed me to easily complete missions by locating demons.
Then Ubuyashiki gave us a briefing on the activities of the demon. He showed us a map with all of the demon sightings and we traced thier movement. It was there that each of the Hashira was assigned territories which we needed to keep an eye on. Plus, any lower-rank demon slayers who need assistance in that area will call upon us for help.
I was assigned the eastern regions as they had the most villages.
Many other minor things were also discussed in the meeting and the whole thing took nearly a day.
..
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[1 month later]
I returned to the Flower Mansion for this month's break. Shinobu was in the mansion much to my delight and funnily enough, she was still not a demon slayer yet as she missed the latest final selection.
"How've you been Shibi?" I asked as her face lit up upon seeing me.
"I've been well." she said with a barely restraint voice. She immediately grabbed my hand after that and pulled me inside.
"Why did you not visit again sooner? Come on, I have many things to show you!!" she said excitedly.
Apparently, she had been making great progress in her research of Demon poison. She said it was all due to my advice that she even thought of developing it.
Then there was also her sword, which she had modified by chipping off almost the entire body of the edges, leaving only the sharp tip.
She immediately asked me for a spar which I entertained. She asked me my opinion on her newly created fighting style which heavily relied on stabbing and she shared her vision with me. She would have a personalised sword that would allow her to apply poison to her blade.
She had lots of ideas. Just coating the sword with poison would not work as that would be almost useless and would chase away the demons with the smell of wisteria. So she had to be creative in its design.
A sword whose tip acted as a syringe, a sword with storage for poison at the tip, and a sword that had a small pipe running along the body were some of the ideas she had.
I also proposed some ideas like using a rapier, hoping to give her some inspiration.
So for the next two days, we spent time together on such matters. We would also go out at night, just the two of us, under the moon.
It would've been romantic if not for our reason for going out. To haunt and experiment on demons.
To test her poison, we haunted demons together and used them as lab rats.
I spent all four days of my break doing such things before I had to leave again.
..
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[2 months later]
I spent this time mastering my breathing styles. I felt like I had perfected Water Breathing so I began trying to learn the eleventh form of Water Breathing.
For a whole two months, there was absolutely no progress in learning the eleventh form but I did not give up. I never expected learning such an overpowered skill to be easy anyway.
I could perfectly replicate the laminar flow and the breathing patterns but what I struggled with was achieving the selfless state. It was almost impossible to bear no hatred, animosity or hostility when fighting against demons.
It was clear that I would need to face some traumas and fix myself mentally to learn the form but I believe I could find a loophole with the help of my eyes. There had to be some tricks other than having to stop myself from hating the demons.
Because honestly, I don't think I will ever not hate them.
I visited Rengoku and Giyu during this time to have bro moments but other than that, it was filled with missions, training my breathing styles and trying to learn the eleventh form of Water Breathing.
..
..
In no time, a total of 6 months have passed.
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