Ayanokouji Kiyotaka The Demon Slayer

『A Fateful Encounter』

“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.” ─ Alfred Adler

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The shining Sun heralded the dawn. Its golden light dispelled the darkness, casting a warm embrace over the world, awakening it to a new day filled with hope and vitality—Or that's what I thought would happen, at least.

I had no way of confirming the actual time, so of course, the part above was purely my imagination just for a better narrative. Yeah, and I'm really bad at that.

Due to the intense weather and the unknown location, it was difficult to determine if it was daytime. All I could do was trust my internal clock and senses, which told me that it was supposedly right after dawn.

If you think about it, I shouldn't have been able to see the Moon back then, but I could tell that it was night. How odd.

Back to the present situation.

The girl I was treating—whom I found out later that her name was Nezuko and also Tanjirou's little siste—was getting better. It took a while, but her breathing finally stabilized. Looks like the couple of hours I spent didn't go to waste after all.

It would be a real shame if all my efforts were rendered useless. I didn't particularly care about her, however, her being alive would make my next plans much easier to execute.

But just when I thought that everything was finally fine, something unexpected happened next.

Nezuko's lying body's size expanded tremendously, and so did her volume, tearing a bit of her garments. She abruptly jumped to her feet, sprinting in my direction like a madman. The girl who had been even shorter than Arisu, was now almost the same height as me. That was something that disregarded an enormous number of scientific regulations and discoveries; Conservation of Mass, Conservation of Energy, Structural Limits, Thermodynamics, Homeostasis, Hormonal Regulation, and many more.

“Ahhrch!”

In a quick motion, I leaped to the back and increased the distance between us, avoiding her sharp nails and the pair of fangs that tried to munch a piece of me. How scary.

Unbalanced after I dodged her initial attack, she fell down with her hands on the snowy ground. Her sudden movements caused a part of her attire to shift slightly, allowing me to witness another enigma: her scars were no longer visible on her white skin, almost as if she had never been injured in the first place.

She was no longer human. Her eyes said that much.

She became what will later be revealed as Demons.

Taking advantage of her position, I quickly pinned her down. I had expected a proportional growth in physical strength seeing her increased body size, but the amount of gained strength was extreme—it exceeded my expectations. She was already stronger than Sudou at this instant.

“Arrrrgh!” she screamed in agony as I added more power to my hands. I mentally apologized, but that level of strength was required if I wanted to fully restrain her.

At any rate, I had found myself in a rather annoying situation. Numerous questions crossed my mind.

I had a hard time trying to explain the current events. Again, the dream hypothesis can answer that question, but I didn't really think it was true. Was this really a dream? No, it wasn't. That was my final answer. Trying to come up with a better explanation, I remembered that Professor had mentioned something that could help me understand my current predicament. Using his words, I was transmigrated. A concept he defined as when someone is teleported to another world where the universal laws are different; the existence of monsters, magic, aliens, superpowers, demons, and such. It typically happens after death. A genre of anime/manga he called Isekai. If I overlooked how ridiculous it might sound, it conveyed my situation flawlessly—minus the death part.

A side of me really wanted to believe that was the case. A side that longed for freedom more than anything else. If I was truly in another world, then for the first and last time, I would be finally free.

My priority was not to find out what happened to me—whatever it was, it could wait—but to her.

Speaking of her, was that perhaps what he meant by a success? Her turning into something inhumane? Her usefulness to me was half gone now that she had become a demon, however, I could still use her in other ways—she was an existence that defied the rules of nature, after all. Contemplating the pros and cons of the available choices, I was interrupted midway as I sensed a presence in the nearby area.

Turning behind, my eyes landed on a boy with a burn mark on the left side of his forehead. He wore a black and green coat and was holding an old-fashioned back bag, filled with a little coal. He was breathing heavily with a few droplets of water on his face. It seemed like he had been running for a while, and his arrival wasn't a mere coincidence evident by his expression. He was probably the person I was waiting for. I didn't know if I should be happy or sad about that.

He couldn't possibly hear Nezuko's screams from a distance that could make a normal human being that exhausted, right?

That would put his hearing sense at an inhuman level.

Processing the situation, he threw his bag and started running towards me. From his perspective, he might have thought that I was the one responsible for whatever happened here, as he couldn't see the state Nezuko was in.

“Your hands off my sister!”

Letting out a heavy sigh, the mere thought of what would happen next caused my non-existent willingness to cooperate to turn into smoke.

How was I supposed to clear this misunderstanding?

I guess you will find that out in the next chapter.