"You bastard!"
'Coerced Swooning Sleep: Eyeballs'
All of Enmu's eyes snapped open in sync, projecting waves of energy that spread out like ripples on water.
That was the true nightmare of his technique: a single locked gaze and you were done for, dragged by force into the dream world.
"Senpai, look out!" Tanjiro's shout rang out again.
But...
Seeing Marcus with his eyes shut tight, Enmu burst into rage.
"You think just closing your eyes is enough!? How the hell do you think you're going to dodge my attacks if you can't see a damn thing!? You're way too stu—!"
Swish
Without being able to finish, a blade had been swung. Without opening his eyelids even a millimeter, Marcus sliced off half of his torso in a single clean cut.
"Gyaaa!!"
Enmu's scream of agony echoed throughout the entire train, but his arrogance lasted longer than the pain. A second later, he was already healing.
"Useless! Pointless!" he yelled with a deranged laugh as his sliced body knit itself back together. "Hahaha! Attacking me like that, you're never going to be able to kill me!"
"... Thanks for the warning."
"Breath of Desire, Fifth Form..." Marcus's blade lit up with an intense pink glow that defied the darkness of the night.
"Crimson Curtain."
And it exploded.
A hundred slashes were executed in the blink of an eye.
Countless flashes of light burst out in an instant, weaving together to form a luminous, semicircular veil of deep red.
Marcus became the center of a lethal whirlwind. Anything within a three-meter radius was swallowed up.
Tentacles.
Flesh.
Eyes.
And even the half of the body Enmu had just regenerated.
Everything, absolutely everything, was shredded down to dust.
Lucky for Enmu, the Crimson Curtain only lasted three seconds. When it faded, the area around Marcus was completely clean.
There wasn't a trace of the abomination left. Even the flesh lining the car under his feet had been wiped away, exposing the gleaming original iron of the train.
"..."
Tanjiro's mouth fell open.
His gaze went from the gleaming metal of the train to the blade Marcus held with such confidence.
"Gulp."
Just as he suspected… that Form wasn't purely a defensive move. His hunch had been right.
But Marcus knew that Form wasn't for a head-on clash of strength. To reach the speed he had just demonstrated, sacrificing power was necessary, and against an opponent of his own level, those cuts would probably fall short.
However, against a demon like Enmu, who staked everything on mind control and lacked any real physical defense, this Form was, literally, a meat grinder.
Finally, he opened his eyes.
And seeing how that viscous mass was still squirming, trying to regenerate, he pursed his lips in annoyance.
He'd considered using his [Field of Threads], but that Form was static. It would get left behind on the rails while the train kept roaring forward.
He needed something that would move with him.
"Senpai!!"
Tanjiro finally came running up beside him, panting from the exertion and tension.
"The demon fused with the whole train!" He pointed urgently toward the locomotive. "His weak spot is right at the front! If we cut the neck that's there, we can kill him!"
"I'm not going to kill him."
"What!? You're not going to kill him!?" Tanjiro looked at him as if he'd lost his mind.
He looked at the regenerating mass of flesh and then at the infested cars. "If we don't finish him off, what'll happen to the passengers? We can't stay here guarding them forever!"
"Go." Marcus pointed with his sword toward the inside of the car. "Tell everyone to clear out the space in the central aisle."
As he spoke, his sword began to vibrate, wrapped in a current of pink fire that started to grow unnaturally.
At first, Tanjiro was still mulling over the order to clear the aisles, but seeing how the pink blade was turning gigantic, an expression of horror appeared on his face.
"You're not thinking of...!?"
Marcus winked at him. "If you don't go warn them right now, everyone's going to die."
"You're insane!"
Diving headfirst into the car, Tanjiro shouted at the top of his lungs as he ran between the seats.
"ZENITSU! INOSUKE! RENGOKU-SAN! RUN! GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Hearing his shouts fade into the distance, Marcus raised the sword.
He sized up the train.
Let's see... each car was about twenty-three meters long. With eight in total, we were talking over a hundred and eighty meters in length.
With only Makomo at his side, [Valkyrie] could reach forty or fifty meters at most.
It definitely wasn't enough to split the entire train with a single cut.
… But there's always a more fun way.
"Time to fly," he murmured with a grin before leaping with everything he had.
In midair, he switched his grip.
He spun his hands on the hilt and reversed the direction of the blade, pointing the tip straight down at the ground.
Then, the gigantic blade, which up until a second ago had been ten meters long, gave a savage stretch until it reached thirty, and came down with the full weight of his will.
"Breath of Desire, First Form, Valkyrie!"
Crash!
The blade slammed violently into the roof of the first car.
The sound of tearing metal was so deafening it swallowed up the noise of the engine. The blade ripped through the car as if it were made of paper, cut through the floor, and buried itself deep into the tracks.
Instantly, all hell broke loose.
The locomotive kept pulling at full speed, but the cars trailing behind got sliced in two, end to end.
Enmu, who was still trying to regenerate, suddenly felt a bolt of lightning split his chest.
It was the blade... it was that bastard's damn sword again!
But he didn't get even five seconds to process the trauma, because the pain expanded rapidly, traveling down from his sternum like a zipper being ripped open.
HE WAS BEING CLEAVED IN TWO!
He completely lost control. He couldn't manage his two halves—or rather, the two parts of the train were slipping out of his grasp.
Aside from the locomotive, the eight remaining cars went off the tracks, tipping over with a thunderous crash. With no wheels to support them, the small head of the train didn't have the slightest chance of dragging that metal corpse along.
Under the violent jerk between the engine and the rest of the convoy…
CRASH!
The coupling between the head and the first car flew through the air, disintegrating in an instant.
"GYAAAAAA! MY BODY! MY BEAUTIFUL BODY!" Enmu had now been reduced to a sad head stuck onto the locomotive.
But he was a DEMON.
He wasn't going to throw in the towel just because they'd left him "a little" dismembered. He wanted blood, he wanted revenge, and above all, he wanted that human to pay!
Even though his body and head had been separated, a demon like him could still pull the strings of his flesh to launch one last desperate attack.
"DIE!"
Massive lumps of flesh sprouted from the cars split down the middle, raising up tentacles that thrashed wildly in every direction.
However... just as the sun imposes itself over the darkness every morning, the fire reappeared.
Rengoku was standing on top of the wreckage of the cars. After setting a passenger safely down on the ground, the sword in his hand burst into a glow that mimicked the dawn.
"Flame Breathing, Fourth Form: Blooming Flame Undulation!"
The flames spread out like a tidal wave, surrounding the passengers without singeing a single hair, but incinerating both halves of Enmu's body before they could even kill anyone.
It was true.
A demon's body can keep moving without a head, but the problem is that, with no connection to the head, there's no regeneration.
Enmu's head, hidden among the wreckage of the locomotive, watched with hatred as his precious body turned to ashes.
Like a madman, he activated his Blood Demon Art one last time. Beneath the engine of the locomotive, the remnants of tissue began to twist, spawning a pale, deformed body.
But it didn't matter. He was alone. He had lost the cars and, with them, control of the train.
"You'll see…," he muttered with fury as his new flesh frantically shoveled coal into the furnace. "I'll be back!"
The locomotive started to roar, letting off steam. He had only one thing in mind: floor it and disappear into the night. If he could escape and stay alive, there was still a chance to redeem himself in front of Muzan.
But his escape plans crashed into a three-meter-long reality.
Out of nowhere, a blade still spitting pink flames pierced the roof of the cabin and slammed violently into his spine.
A radiant Marcus, with a firm hand on the hilt, was half-crouched in the conductor's cabin with a smile.
"Stop right there."
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