Chapter 442: One Month
Shinobu Kochō? In the Demon Slayer world, Tanjirō — having steadily boosted his own strength over the past while through daily sign-in Points — sank into thought. It wasn't that she wasn't famous; he genuinely just had no idea who she was.
The reason was simple enough: Ryū's own intervention in events had thrown things off enough that Tanjirō had never once crossed paths with Giyu Tomioka.
Which meant that, while he'd heard of the Demon Slayer Corps' existence from Ryū himself, he had no real idea who actually made up its ranks.
Let alone any idea of the Corps' famous Hashira, their identities, or their names.
The only reason Tanjirō had even asked whether she was from the Demon Slayer world was because Ryū had mentioned, in passing, that she was "from Tanjirō's own world" — that alone had told him enough about where she'd come from.
Kamado Tanjirō: Oh, so you're a Demon Slayer Corps member! I'm not actually part of the Corps myself, but I'm working to grow stronger every day with the resolve to kill demons too!
Kamado Tanjirō: Since you're with the Corps, you must know a lot about Kibutsuji Muzan, right?
Insect Breathing: Kibutsuji Muzan?!
Insect Breathing: ...How do you know that name? Have you actually crossed paths with him?
Kamado Tanjirō: I... I'm not totally sure. I don't know for certain if he's the one who turned my little sister into a demon. But Admin-sama said he's bad news, and if he's bad news and a demon on top of it, then I'm absolutely going to wipe him out.
Insect Breathing: ...I don't know Muzan well myself, but he's the Corps' sworn enemy. We've spent years trying to kill him.
Crazy Diamond: From what Admin-sama's told us, that "Muzan" guy's actually pretty easy to deal with, isn't he?
Insect Breathing: Easy to deal with???
Crazy Diamond: Since Tanjirō's world is set around the First World War timeline, you'd think stuff like steel cannons and whatnot would already be widely available.
Crazy Diamond: Just take whatever materials you'd normally use to forge demon-slaying blades and use them to build a bunch of guns and artillery instead. Blow him to pieces, problem solved.
Insect Breathing: Huh???
"..."
Back in the Demon Slayer world, Shinobu sat utterly baffled. That was actually an option?
The trouble was, would the swordsmiths who forged Nichirin Blades even know how to build a gun, let alone artillery? Probably not.
And besides... killing a demon required severing its head. Cannon fire probably couldn't manage a clean decapitation, could it?
Wait. Something clicked for Shinobu, and her expression gradually sharpened into something more serious.
Sure, forging specialized firearms to hunt demons might not be practical, given the Corps' constraints. But if the demons ever got their hands on firearms to use against the Corps instead — there weren't many members who could stand against that.
Shinobu had never personally witnessed a cannon's destructive power, but she'd seen a gun's firsthand — bullets moving fast enough that even she couldn't dodge them, not unless she reacted before the trigger was even pulled.
And if a demon ever picked up a firearm, would it give her any chance to react in advance at all? The more she thought about it, the more unsettled she became.
What she had no way of knowing, though, was that Kibutsuji Muzan — the figure she assumed to be a genuinely cunning, calculating mastermind — had never once considered arming demons with modern weapons in the first place.
Muzan never once realized that, had he simply seized control of the Land of the Rising Sun during this era and amassed a hundred-plus heavy cannons, he could've leveled the Demon Slayer Corps' entire headquarters outright.
As the days passed, a full month went by since Shinobu first joined the Dimensional Chat Group.
That month passed quietly, with no major incidents — not even a single additional newcomer joining the group. By now, Shinobu had fully settled into the Dimensional Chat Group's rhythm.
At the very least, she'd used her daily sign-in Points to reinforce herself more times than she could count.
Over that stretch, she'd also completed one group quest, through which she'd picked up both the Six Powers and a one-sword style of swordsmanship sourced from the One Piece world.
Which meant that, while the Demon Slayer Corps' strongest member on paper might still be Gyomei Himejima, the actual strongest, in practice, was now Shinobu herself.
Not that she advertised any of this — at least not within the Demon Slayer world itself, where she still played the part of the Insect Hashira everyone knew: nominally weak in raw strength, supposedly unable even to decapitate a demon outright.
"A whole month's gone by already..."
At the Demon Slayer Corps' headquarters, inside the Butterfly Estate, Shinobu gazed quietly at the distant sunset, murmuring to herself. "It'll be dark soon. No telling how much further I still have to go before I match Muzan's strength."
Over the past month, she'd trained relentlessly. Sure, she had the "Dimensional Chat Group" cheat backing her, but she'd still humbly sought guidance from the group's veterans on matters of cultivation and technique — consulting Whitebeard, Sengoku, Master Roshi, Ryū, Yukari, and others.
As a result, her rate of growth over this one month had been genuinely staggering — fast enough that even she found it hard to believe.
By now, Shinobu had fully mastered the Six Powers, and had gotten her footing in a one-sword swordsmanship style as well — strong enough, by One Piece world standards, to be considered a genuine "Swordmaster."
Granted, that still meant she was only a fledgling Swordmaster, barely able to cleave through solid iron and produce a basic slash of compressed air.
But measured against Demon Slayer's own power scale, that was already an absurd level of strength. A single slash from Shinobu now could cleave an entire city street clean in two.
Not that it was much of an achievement, given most of this era's buildings in the Land of the Rising Sun were still wooden — far too easy to cut through.
Even reinforced concrete structures, though, Shinobu could now cleave in half without much trouble.
And even without Observation Haki yet, she could dodge ordinary gunfire outright, or simply shrug off the impact entirely using Iron Body.
"A month of hard training, wrapped up for now. Staying at the Butterfly Estate too long would start raising suspicion — time to head back out and hunt demons. If I could run into an Upper Rank demon, even better — I could finally get a real sense of where my current strength actually stands."
Shinobu pulled her gaze away from the sunset, took a deep breath, and set aside any further unproductive thoughts.