Chapter 149: Lower Moon? I'm the Man Who Will Become an Upper Moon!
Cold rain drizzled through the dead of night as storm clouds swallowed both moon
and stars.
The night watchmen and city magistrates had long since been bought off by the
Zaizen clan; not a single living soul walked this district.
Certainly no one walked this slick stone alleyway.
And so, no one witnessed the agile, blood-drenched silhouette streaking through
the downpour at a speed far beyond human limits, bare feet splashing silently
through slush and gravel as if friction itself were an illusion.
It was Minonenmaru.
Clutched in his hands were several spherical bundles wrapped in rough oilcloth,
dark crimson fluid steadily leaking through the seams.
These were the fruits of tonight's "contract work": the severed heads of five or
six merchants and samurai who had dared oppose the Zaizen family.
Their bodies, naturally, had already disappeared into his stomach.
"My luck is on fire tonight..."
He licked his lips, practically drunk on sheer euphoria.
"Who would have thought that teahouse master was a Marechi?!"
The dizzying rush of pure, unadulterated power instantly washed away the
lingering dread he had felt toward the Demon Slayer Corps.
A single Marechi possessed the nutritional and spiritual potency of thirty
ordinary humans combined. To a demon, such prey was nothing short of an earthly
treasure. Devour two or three, and even an ordinary stray could breach the
threshold of the Twelve Kizuki.
For demons with small appetites or limited digestive capacities, a Marechi was
priceless. Normal demons hit hard biological ceilings based on how many mortals
they could consume.
A Marechi shattered that ceiling.
Yet it was precisely that potency that induced an intoxicating, drunken high in
demons.
Feeling the searing, dense heat churning within his gut, Minonenmaru could
literally feel his physical stats and Blood Demon Art swelling by the second.
The last time he had felt a rush like this was the very night he tasted human
flesh for the first time.
"At this rate... my power has already knocked on the door of that realm."
Power bred ambition, and in his drunken stupor, that ambition bloated out of
control.
"How do I compare to those washed-up Lower Moons who only hold their seats
through seniority?"
"Hell... right now, I might even be stronger than them!"
His thoughts raced straight to the ladder climb:
Should he directly invoke a Blood Battle and challenge one of the upper seats?
Take down Lower One or Two in a single leap?
Or play it safe and claim a vacant seat first—like Lower Five or Six?
Two days ago, Minonenmaru would have chosen the conservative route without
hesitation. Secure a Kizuki title first, get a taste of the elite lifestyle, and
slowly pick off weaker targets to climb toward the Upper Ranks.
Now?
The Marechi rush had bypassed his brain's survival limiters. He felt invincible.
A Blood Battle! Definitely a Blood Battle!
By crushing an active Lower Moon, he wouldn't just take their rank; he'd absorb
their flesh and the concentrated blood of the Progenitor coursing through their
veins.
Blood Battles operated on simple, brutal rules: Any demon that awakened a Blood
Demon Art could submit a challenge petition to Lord Muzan through their cellular
connection.
Since Muzan viewed Lower Moons and baseline demons as disposable cattle,
challenge requests were almost always approved automatically. The challenger
would receive a psychic coordinate marking the target's location.
For a demon nearing the Lower Moon threshold, running across half of Japan on
foot took only a night or two. Travel time was negligible.
If circumstances permitted, the nearest Upper Moon was dispatched to witness the
duel.
If the challenger won, they inherited the rank and had total dominion over the
loser's corpse—including the right to devour every drop of the Demon King's
blood within them. To a common demon, even a few drops of that refined blood was
an elixir equal to a dozen Marechi.
That was why an intoxicated Minonenmaru leaned toward a duel. It was also why no
Lower Moon ever refused a challenge.
I've devoured dozens of humans and a fresh Marechi. If I digest a former Lower
Moon on top of that... Could I challenge the Upper Moon referee on the spot?!
The top three Upper Ranks were out of the question, but what about Upper Five or
Upper Six? Surely they weren't unkillable!
Over the past thousand years, plenty of Lower Moons had harbored similar
delusions. Most had their heads cleared the instant they stood before the
suffocating, divine pressure of an Upper Moon.
Those whose heads didn't clear? They ended up as snacks to enrich the Upper
Moon's blood reserves.
Minonenmaru grew more manic the more he calculated, already locking onto his
ideal stepping stone:
"That drum-beating failure... He has the same baseline stats as the rest of us,
yet he lucked into the rank purely because of his spatial gimmick."
He approached the side gate of the Zaizen estate, then stopped dead in his
tracks.
Usually, elite mercenaries stood guard here. Tonight, the alley was deathly
quiet.
A sliver of suspicion pierced his drunken haze. Still, he pushed the gate open
and stepped into the outer courtyard.
Under the dim lanterns, several human guards were sprawled haphazardly across
the rain-soaked stones.
They were breathing.
It looked as though they had been knocked unconscious with surgical precision;
even the freezing rain hadn't stirred them from their sleep.
What is this? Retaliation from another merchant house? Or another demon muscling
in on my territory?
The Demon Slayer Corps? Since when do Demon Slayers ignore monsters to deliver
blunt-force trauma to ordinary humans?
A dark premonition settled over his chest. Minonenmaru crouched beside one of
the guards and tried slapping the man's face to wake him.
Though he viewed mortals as livestock, he needed answers immediately.
Yet no matter how hard he slapped, the guard remained limp.
"Oi~ you can't wake them up like that. I used a slightly heavy dose of ether."
A calm, idle voice drifted from the gloom nearby.
Minonenmaru recoiled several paces, his back arching like a hissing feral cat.
The sliding doors of the main hall were pulled open.
A figure stepped into the courtyard, dragging a whimpering, disheveled, obese
middle-aged man by the collar.
Minonenmaru recognized the fat man instantly: the head of the Zaizen clan.
The one dragging him was a young swordsman with an air of youthful nonchalance.
Demon Slayer Corps?! No... the gear is wrong.
Minonenmaru's guard shot up.
The youth wasn't wearing a standard Corps uniform. He wore a crisp, custom white
haori over a structured, loose black tunic. Three katanas were strapped to his
waist alongside an ornate gauntlet.
Raindrops slid down the boy's profile and dripped from the hem of his pristine
white haori.
Compared to the grim, ragged Slayers Minonenmaru had seen, this teenager looked
like an aristocratic young master out on a leisurely stroll.
Yet in the flickering lantern light, the way he dragged his human prey through
the mud radiated a chilling, clinical presence far more terrifying than any
demon.
The Zaizen patriarch had clearly undergone "enhanced interrogation." His face
was covered in fresh contusions, and several fingers adorned with expensive
rings were bent at unnatural, sickening angles.
"P-Please, have mercy! Don't kill me! I really know nothing!" the fat man
blubbered. "I can give you gold! Women! You're a samurai, right? I know master
smiths—I can commission legendary swords for you!"
The merchant sobbed hysterically until his eyes locked onto the masked demon
standing in the rain, severed heads clutched in hand.
The sniveling coward vanished instantly, replaced by a snarling, desperate
madness.
"Minonenmaru! You're back! Quick, kill this brat!"
"Money?! I'll give you everything in the vault!"
"Just leave the body to me! I need to vent every shred of my rage on this little
bas—"
CRACK!
A sickening snap silenced the merchant. His right arm was bent backward like a
broken dry twig.
"Is this your version of 'knowing nothing'?" Natsuya asked, not even looking
down at the screaming man.
He turned his eyes toward the masked demon across the yard, his voice as casual
as someone asking for directions at a crossroads:
"The stray hiding out in this estate... is you, right?"
A breath circulated.
An inky, starry expanse of cosmic weight materialized around Natsuya's
silhouette. It distorted the rain, reaching out toward the demon like the
invisible tendrils of an event horizon.
Minonenmaru froze completely.
Every predatory instinct in his body screamed in absolute, deafening terror.
DANGER. EXTREME DANGER.
☆☆☆
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