It was night.
Amid the shadows, a lone wolf moved with light steps, keeping its body low and alert, its gaze fixed on a deer grazing a few meters ahead.
Everything pointed to an easy kill.
But before the wolf could attack, the deer trembled, and then collapsed, dead.
No sound, no visible wound, it simply dropped out of nowhere.
The wolf stepped back, the fur along its spine bristling, instinct screaming danger.
Until the faint chime of a bell cut through the silence.
Slowly, the wolf turned.
There, in the shadows, two purple eyes glowed in the darkness.
Usan stood still, calmly observing it.
The wolf felt instinct take over.
It whimpered, made an awkward leap, and fled stumbling away, howling in fear as it disappeared.
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POV Usan
I simply watched it flee, in silence.
My eyes lost their supernatural purple glow as I approached the deer's body.
"The training was worth it…" I murmured, lifting the deer with monstrous ease and placing it over my shoulder.
By morning, I finished eating the last piece of the deer I had hunted yesterday, while observing the place that had been my home for quite some time.
I dismantled the camp slowly, without much hurry.
Before leaving, I drove the wooden weapons that had accompanied me during training into the massive fallen tree.
I put on the wolf pelt cloak, wore the black mask, checked my belongings, and began walking.
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I traveled for about a month at a steady pace.
I was walking mostly at night and sleeping very little, since my body no longer required as much rest as before.
The main reason for the journey was simple: to evolve the symbiotic boots.
They should already be close to changing form, needing just a few more days of walking.
At least I hoped so...
Another reason had bothered me throughout all my training:
At what point in the timeline was I?
Was it the era of Yoriichi, or was I close to Tanjiro?
The question hammered my mind without rest.
Perhaps I was either completely late or way ahead of schedule, and that made me quite anxious.
The third reason was the most obvious, to fight Onis and grow stronger.
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During my time in the forest, I tried to learn Breathing techniques.
I managed to create an incomplete version, a rudimentary but functional constant breathing.
It kept my body stable and my focus sharp, enough to prolong battles and resist fatigue, but without special moves.
I imagine this rapid learning is due to the "assassin's talent," but I still wasn't quite sure how the breathing techniques worked properly, so that would have to do for now.
During my travels, I passed through a few villages, but I never stayed in one place for very long; to be honest, I didn't even show up much.
Unfortunately, I never got anything very useful from those places, but I took the opportunity to practice my stealth.
I listened to conversations, observed behavior, gathered information, and amused myself with how invisible I was.
In one of those passages, something changed.
I felt a snap vibrate through my legs, a living sensation, as if something had awakened.
The symbiotic boots had finally evolved.
A silent piece of information echoed in my mind, almost like pre-written text:
[ "Synchronized Souls"
Increases movement speed out of combat.
Once per day, grants a large burst of out-of-combat speed.
Evolves after a period of time.
Walking reduces this time. ]
I smiled beneath the mask, barely resisting the urge to test the new effect.
And briefly, I didn't resist, I only used it after leaving the village and… I ran FAST!!.
The trees blurred past at a staggering speed, my reflexes keeping me from smashing into them.
The passive speed had also increased significantly, I was covering much more ground now.
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I continued traveling for another five months.
Now, already fifteen years old.
I've been eating poisonous things I found along the way, and I even let myself be bitten by some venomous snakes.
My resistance to poisons was getting better and better, and honestly, natural poisons didn't do much to me, just give me a nasty headache.
In the first doses I also had some problems with diarrhea, pain and low blood pressure, but nothing as bad as the poison that the guide had told me to drink.
And the worst effects disappeared after about three doses, so everything's fine!
In my search for poisonous plants and mushrooms, I also looked for a certain flower that would be of great help on my journey.
And after searching for some time, I finally found it!
Wisteria flowers! Growing between rocks and roots.
Beautiful flowers, almost glowing under the moonlight, with the very interesting bonus of being toxic to Oni.
Onis were actually quite rare; I had only encountered about six or seven before.
None of them offered me a real fight, and neither of them had KekkiJutsu, so I had to tediously beat them up until dawn.
That's because I was actively hunting them, but after the seventh Oni, I decided to look for the flower to make my job easier.
A good amount of time had passed since then, I was much stronger and better at tracking and searching with my presence, so with the right weapon I could find and hunt some Oni with ease.
With that in mind, I immediately began producing experimental poisons.
First, using only the serum extracted from crushed flowers.
It was little, and diluting it with water made it too weak.
Then, I tried using the entire crushed flower mass.
The results were… acceptable.
But the real learning came when I tested tem in the field, against Onis.
I discovered that the key was concentration: the poison needed to be concentrated, but fluid enough to circulate quickly through the Oni's body.
There were many attempts, many errors, and many unfortunate Oni who eagerly volunteered for my tests.
But in the end, I achieved an efficient prototype: strong enough to kill lower Oni and weaken those with Blood Demon Arts.
Simple, cheap, and quick to produce.
From that point on, I no longer needed to wait for sunrise to win.
My enemies died before the sun could rise.
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One day, amidst the fog, I came across an isolated village.
I felt something wrong about that place, something about the people and the village's very mood.
I spent days observing and listening.
It was deeply unsettling, and at some point, I understood:
It was a village belonging to the Eternal Paradise, the cult of Dōma, Upper Moon Two.
After discovering this, I did not approach directly.
I won't lie, I felt a chill down my spine when I realized it.
I wasn't ready to face an Upper Moon yet.
I set up a hidden base in the surroundings, far enough not to be discovered, but close enough to observe every movement.
I spent days and nights watching, listening, waiting for any clue about the time I was living in, taking special care not to draw attention, especially making sure to keep my presence as silent as possible.
But nothing clear emerged.
Meanwhile, I continued refining my poisons.
Even if I didn't want a confrontation with a monster like Dōma, I needed to be prepared, you never know.
One night, while observing the village from a distance, I caught sight of a different figure approaching the entrance from the corner of my eye, a woman with long black hair wearing a colorful haori.
'A Demon Slayer?'
'Wait… This one…'
'Is familiar...'
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