Chapter 152: Useless Objects
Inside one of the rooms of the Kyōgoku House.
Gyūtarō, still on his knees, felt his soul flee his body as he watched Daki’s sashes hurl themselves at their master in such an act of treason.
"Don’t do it!"
But it was already too late. The sashes had already reached Muzan.
Muzan moved. Without losing an ounce of elegance, he merely raised his hand and gave it a flick. With that simple gesture, the sashes dropped limply to the floor.
In that same instant, an invisible force slammed Daki into the ground.
"Wham!"
Her face smashed against the wood with a dull crack that wrecked her nose. She tried to struggle back up, but that force bore down on her with the weight of an entire mountain.
"Daki... are you trying to kill me?"
Daki froze.
This voice... this tone... this tremendous pressure...
All at once, the rage clouding her mind dissipated completely.
’It’s over...’
’It’s over!’
’THIS IS THE REAL MUZAN-SAMA!’
"M-Muzan-sama...please hear my explanation..."
Muzan didn’t answer. He merely narrowed his eyes, and a deep fury brimmed in his eyes.
The finger with which he’d stopped the sashes lowered a millimeter.
And with that, the skin of Daki’s face began to peel away.
It started at the forehead, as if an invisible hand were tearing it off, and gave way inch by inch, leaving the raw flesh exposed.
Daki convulsed violently, her nails digging into the wood, wrenching a screech out of the floor.
But she didn’t dare scream.
Much less complain.
All she could do was clench her teeth with all her might as blood welled up from the corners of her lips.
Gyūtarō trembled without pause.
"Muzan-sama!!"
He slammed his forehead against the floor, once, twice, three times...
"I’m sure Daki didn’t do it on purpose! I beg you to give her a chance to explain!"
"Explain?" Muzan didn’t even deign to look at him. "What is there to explain? How she let herself be fooled like that by that traitor?"
Daki shuddered.
Mind reading.
’Muzan-sama is reading my thoughts...’
With a superhuman effort, she lifted her head to meet his gaze, her eyes drowning in blood. "My lord! I-I saw it! I saw that estate!"
"There’s no ambush! There are no traps in there! That place is just a testing ground for the human Marcus! Tamayo... Tamayo and the others are there! But it’s only them!"
Muzan’s finger lifted.
And the pressure crushing Daki eased a little.
"No ambush?"
His voice took on a faint note of interest.
"No! There are no traps or ambushes!" Sensing this, Daki spoke in a rush. "Tamayo is running some kind of experiment!"
"Did you see the laboratory?"
"Yes! I saw it! I saw it!" She nodded at breakneck speed. "But I... I didn’t understand any of it... though I did manage to see that a lot of the test tubes had labels."
"Oh?... So you didn’t understand a thing."
Muzan studied her terrified eyes and fell silent for a brief instant.
Then, his eyes gleamed.
He began to dig through Daki’s memories.
He saw Yushiro, he saw Pearl guiding her across the courtyard and up the stairs, he saw Daki being drawn into Marcus’s arms...
And then...
He saw Marcus’s face just inches away!
Muzan’s eternally indifferent face contorted violently.
Not out of embarrassment, but out of RAGE.
He whipped his hand up and unleashed an even more terrifying force down on Daki.
CRACK!
The sound of ribs snapping resonated through the room. A torrent of blood gushed from Daki’s mouth as she was flattened completely against the floor.
"You’re gone for one whole night... and the only thing you do is let them toy with you?" his voice trembled with pent-up rage. "How dare you? How dare you force me to watch such disgusting memories?!"
Gyūtarō’s pupils contracted.
Seeing his sister in that state, the last thread of sanity he had left finally snapped.
"Muzan-sama!"
He threw himself over Daki and shielded her with his own body, taking the immense pressure onto himself.
A string of cracks burst inside him, like fireworks of breaking bones. Blood spurted from his mouth and dripped onto Daki’s face. His limbs trembled, his spine arched under the strain... but he didn’t give an inch.
"I beg you! I beg you, forgive her! She just had a moment of carelessness! She didn’t do it on purpose!"
"ONII-CHAN!!!"
The tears were already streaming down Daki’s face.
She looked at her brother sprawled on top of her, watching his face deformed by the immense pressure, and felt a pain in her chest as if her heart were being wrung out.
"G-Get off... don’t get involved in this..."
"Shut up!"
Teeth clenched, Gyūtarō clung to the floor with all his strength.
Daki noticed the pressure on her body slacken a little, and hurried to grab hold of that last shred of salvation.
"Muzan-sama, a-after! After that Tamayo took me to see the laboratory!"
Only then did Muzan ease up on the force a bit. Swallowing his humiliation, he quickly flipped through the pages of the rest of Daki’s memories.
He saw Tamayo.
He saw the laboratory.
He saw the instruments, the test tubes covered in labels.
He saw the images of Ivy and Pearl manipulating spider threads and cocoons.
He saw the test subjects locked in the iron cages of the basement.
He saw the little demonized girl in the garden...
Muzan’s expression changed completely.
He knew Tamayo very well and knew her ability inside and out too, but this was different.
Her ability had changed.
And then there were those two servant girls. Before, they’d been nothing more than Rui’s toys... At what point had they gathered enough power to stand up to his Lower Rank Six?
And that girl? Tanjiro’s sister? Had she managed to escape his control after transforming...?
No.
No, to be exact... had every last demon in that mansion broken free of his control?
Because of Tamayo? Because of some experiments?
What an absurd joke. How could something like this be happening?!
Clearly, there was nothing special about those laboratory labels.
Those scientific terms Daki didn’t understand, he understood perfectly.
They were nothing more than studies on blood purification. And of the most rudimentary kind in existence.
Had Tamayo really managed to free them from his control using nothing but methods this simple?
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?!
Muzan’s mind was a whirlwind of emotions.
Before, it had only been Tamayo. Taking advantage of his weakness, she had escaped his control.
Then came Nezuko... but he’d written that off as an isolated case.
...Not anymore.
Judging by the demons in that mansion, Tamayo commanded a method to completely shatter his perception and his bindings. And on top of that, she could reproduce it on a large scale.
Was it possible? It shouldn’t be!
But the reality was right there before his eyes!
Muzan pressed his fingers against the window frame so hard that the splinters sank into his palm.
Blood began to drip between his fingers.
He felt no pain.
He felt something else, something he had never felt before... he had begun to panic.
What if he let them keep going down that path? What if that method ended up spreading...?
Then his authority, his absolute dominion over the demons, everything that was his... it would all change at its very root.
And there was nothing he loathed more than change.
He liked the eternal and the unchanging.
He was on the verge of hurling himself out the window. He felt the urge to go in person, to raze it all, to wipe that estate off the face of existence.
But at the very instant he turned around...
The first ray of sunlight peeked over the horizon and rooted him to the spot.
He retraced his steps and closed the curtains. Though, given the window’s orientation, the light never would have come in directly, the room sank back into gloom.
Daki and Gyūtarō remained prostrate on the floor.
Muzan stood by the window, his back to them, keeping silent.
Then, he turned around.
Those scarlet pupils, now stripped of any emotion, swept coldly over the two of them.
"I don’t care what method you use. Today you’ll keep them in this house until night falls."
"I’ll come then."
His voice carried a spine-chilling calm.
"If they aren’t here, you two will die."
And without waiting for any reaction, he whispered: "Nakime."
From somewhere in the void, the faint strumming of a biwa resonated. A wooden door materialized beneath Muzan’s feet and swung open.
His body began to descend. And in that last stretch, before disappearing, he cast them a look.
It was the look with which one regards two useless objects that are finally due to be thrown away.
By that moment, he had already made a decision.
That night he wouldn’t settle for reducing that mansion to ashes. No. He would make sure that every single person who knew anything about this matter... vanished from the face of the earth.
The room fell silent once more.
Daki collapsed against the floor, panting, her body drenched in sweat.
"Onii-chan... what... what are we going to do...?"
Gyūtarō didn’t speak.
He just drew her close and gave her a few soft pats on the back. His lips moved, as if he were about to say something, but in the end he said nothing.
He kept turning over the glacial look Muzan had fixed on them before leaving.
...
At that very moment.
On the mountain path leading to the Butterfly Estate, Tanjiro was making his way back at a brisk pace. He’d just finished a mission.
Suddenly, a calico cat carrying a small bag on her back came running out of the bushes at the edge of the path and sat upright in front of him.
"Meow."
Tanjiro arched an eyebrow. "Chachamaru?"
Chachamaru tilted her head and pointed her snout at the little bag she was carrying.
Tanjiro crouched down and, very carefully, untied it to open it.
Inside was a letter.
As he unfolded the paper, he instantly recognized Tamayo’s handwriting.
"Tanjiro-kun, everything’s going wonderfully over here, so don’t worry about a thing.
Nezuko has already started talking. It’s still a bit hard for her, but she gets better at it every day.
The experiment with sunlight has been a complete success: she can now live a completely normal life under the sun.
If the Corps missions don’t have you too busy, I hope you can find a moment to come see her.
Nezuko misses you a lot too..."
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Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎
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