'I'm not afraid! It's just not worth wasting time on a few weak insects and a traitorous little Demon! My goal in becoming one of the Twelve Kizuki wasn't to fight these insects! It was to grow stronger! To devour more people! To gain more favor from Lord Muzan! There's no need to linger here! I must leave!'
Rokuro thought to himself, immediately deciding to flee the scene.
But just as he turned around, a violent whirlwind suddenly erupted at his side.
"Breat of the Wind, First Form: Dust Whirlwind Cutter!"
'Crack!'
Caught completely off guard, Rokuro was once again pierced from top to bottom by a slashing attack.
Kawachi gritted his teeth, the forced overexertion of Wind Breathing causing excruciating pain throughout his body, as if he were being flayed by a thousand blades.
But thinking of his fallen comrades and his family who had perished at the hands of Demons, Kawachi eyes widened with fury and he let out a silent roar.
A surge of immense power suddenly erupted from him, momentarily preventing Rokuro from breaking free.
"Damn human! You're asking for death! Let go!!" Roku howled in desperation.
At the same time, the willow branches growing from his wounds had all withered and his injuries were healing at an astonishingly rapid pace.
But Kawachi didn't falter or show even a hint of fear in the face of Rokuro roar.
With all his strength, he gripped his sword tightly, refusing to let go.
Several ropes suddenly burst from the ground, ruthlessly piercing Kawachi body, yet he still didn't release his grip.
Rokuro was truly panicked now.
"Damn Demon Slayer Corps...."
"YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S GOING TO DIE!"
Before Rokuro could finish his roar, an enraged Shinichi charged at him.
"Blood Demon Art: Raging Blood, Second Stage!!"
Boom!!
A visible wave of scorching crimson energy surged around Shinichi.
His once pale skin had turned completely red and the veins bulging across his exposed skin glowed with an orange-red hue, resembling molten lava.
At a glance, it seemed as though Shinichi body was adorned with fiery patterns.
His eyes now completely bloodshot, Shinichi roared furiously and swung his fists with such speed that only afterimages could be seen.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Rokuro, still restrained by Kawachi, was forced to take every single one of Shinichi punches.
"AHHHHHHH!!"
With one final roar, a searing fist completely shattered the rope armor on Rokuro chest.
"BASTARD!!" In Rokuro wide-eyed terror, Shinichi fist slammed into his chest.
"Blood Demon Art: Life Drain!!"
Thin, elongated branches sprouted from Shinichi palm, instantly surging like venomous snakes within Rokuro body.
A tremendous suction force began to devour Rokuro life force.
"No! No! This can't be! How could I be injured by you insects? I'm a Lower Moon! Lower Moon Four—Rokuro!"
"Save those words in hell! Breat of the Forest, First Form: Iron Birch Slash!!" A flash of green blade light, swift as a fleeting shadow, sliced across Rokuro neck.
"NOOOOOO!!!"
Thud!
Crash!!
A head filled with resentment, along with a massive tree, fell to the ground simultaneously.
Elder Moriki stood in a half-crouched stance, his Nichirin Blade stained with blood, maintaining his slashing posture. But as a gentle breeze blew by, a torrent of blood uncontrollably gushed from his mouth.
In an instant, Elder Moriki once robust body rapidly withered and in the blink of an eye, he became a frail, elderly man.
Thud.
Kawachi could no longer hold on.
His hands slipped weakly from the hilt of the Nichirin Blade and his entire body collapsed to his knees.
The scene before him blurred and a piercing ringing echoed in his ears.
The excruciating pain that had once consumed his body was now gone, replaced only by a numbing sensation.
Kawachi felt dazed.
Was he... going to die?
But that Lower Moon Demon seemed to have been slain, right?
Ah, that's good.
Everyone sacrifices weren't in vain.
Dad, Mom, Jiro... I did... pretty well, didn't I?
In his haze, Kawachi seemed to see his family smiling warmly at him under a radiant light.
A faint smile slowly formed on his lips as Kawachi lowered his head.
The tattered haori behind him fluttered gently in the breeze.
On the other side, Shinichi staggered as he pulled his fist out of Rokuru chest.
Having forcibly activated the Second Stage of Raging Blood, his body had already reached its limit.
If it weren't for the vast amount of life force he had just absorbed from Rokuro, Shinichi would have long collapsed under the strain of the Raging Blood power.
In his dazed state, Shinichi also caught a glimpse of someone life.
***
It was the end of the Edo period, a time when the shogunate was on its last legs.
In an ordinary merchant family in Chiyoda Castle, a dozen fully armed samurai brandished their long swords, threatening the merchant entire family to hand over all their tea plantation deeds.
Despite the merchant desperate pleas, the samurai remained unmoved.
After brutally beating the merchant, they forcibly seized the family ancestral hundred-acre tea plantation.
Having lost all his livelihood to the samurai, the merchant lacked the courage to retaliate.
Instead, he vented his anger on his wife, who also came from a samurai family.
In a drunken rage that night, he grabbed the well pulley used for drawing water and bludgeoned his wife to death. Losing all reason, the merchant didn't even spare his children, who had come running at the commotion.
Finding their cries too annoying, he strangled all his children with the well rope and in the end, sat amidst the corpses, laughing maniacally.
It was on that same night that the pungent smell of blood attracted a man—a man dressed in the lavish attire of nobility.
The merchant couldn't make out his face, only that he had a pair of crimson eyes.
That night, a restaurant in Chiyoda Castle was attacked by an unknown force, leaving dozens dead.
The most gruesome deaths were those of the dozen samurai dining on the top floor.
Their bodies were twisted as if wrung like wet cloth, and their heads were smashed into a fine pulp, as if struck by a giant hammer... This was the life of Rokuro, the life of a despicable merchant.
He resented the samurai, resented his wife, resented his fellow merchants who had watched him go bankrupt without lifting a finger, yet he never once considered that it was his own greed that had brought all this upon himself.
He greedily sought to profit from the chaos of the rebellion in the south, going so far as to borrow money from people all around. His wife, unable to bear seeing her husband rejected, returned to her family and pleaded with her samurai father for help.
Eventually, the merchant managed to borrow a large sum of money from over a dozen wealthy samurai families. However, the ambitious merchant ended up losing everything—his tea and all his possessions were plundered by the rebel army.
He was utterly bankrupt.
With tears in her eyes, the wife once again turned to her father for assistance.
With her father full support, they barely managed to quell the anger of the samurai who wanted to cut the merchant to pieces.
The price was the merchant tea fields.
Yet, the insatiable merchant did not appreciate his father-in-law help.
Instead, he resented him, believing that his father-in-law had betrayed him and allowed the samurai to seize his ancestral property.
Along with this, he also grew to resent his wife...
***
Only the head of Rokuro was left, still shouting in disbelief.
"No! It can't be! How could this happen to me!? How could I lose my head? Impossible! Absolutely impossible! I can't die, not after all I've done to get here, to become one of the Twelve Kizuki. I don't want to die!"
But as his neck gradually turned to ash, Rokuro cries grew fainter.
In the moments before death, memories of his past life as a human suddenly flashed before his eyes.
Gradually, Rokuro was stunned.
He had forgotten everything, only remembering that he had to keep living, to climb higher, to become one of the esteemed Twelve Kizuki.
But the scenes before him now...
"What... what have I done? Yumiko... no, I, I..."
A single clear tear actually appeared at the corner of Rokuro eye.
"A beast like me... I deserve to go to hell."
With these final words, Rokuro head completely turned to ash.
The Lower Moon Four—destroyed!