Demon Slayer: Breath of Desire

From Daki’s point of view, she really was trying to save Marcus. After all, the moment Muzan showed up, they’d all be dead.

To her, Muzan was an invincible being.

The only way to stay alive was to break free of his control before he appeared. After that, they’d figure it out: each fleeing their own way... or together.

But Marcus knew nothing about any of this.

"Save me?" Marcus arched his eyebrows slightly, intrigued. "Come on, tell me—how exactly do you plan to save me?"

Daki lifted her chin arrogantly. "If you’re smart, you’ll come with us to your mansion right now! And the moment you free us from the bond with Muzan, I’ll tell you everything that happened."

While Marcus stood there thinking it over, Gyūtarō shot his sister a reproachful look.

’Didn’t we agree we were just going to kidnap him?!’

Daki met his gaze, looking a little guilty. ’It doesn’t matter how we get there, as long as the result is the same.’

Gyūtarō didn’t know what to say.

Daki was hopeless. Even at a moment like this she was still wavering, still wanting to negotiate.

If they didn’t just haul Marcus off by force already, neither of them would make it out alive!

And then Marcus did something that made it even worse.

"And what if I refuse?"

"I don’t know what went down between you and Muzan, but it’s pretty obvious you’re only begging for my help—and that you’re in a real hurry, too."

He looked at the sickles in Gyūtarō’s hands, then at Daki’s tight-pressed lips.

He smiled.

"Except this way of doing things... doesn’t look like how someone who’s come to ask for help would act."

’Perfect!’

’We gave him a chance and he didn’t take it!’

’Now I don’t care whether my sister likes him or not! Her staying alive is worth more than anything else!’

Gyūtarō glanced sidelong at Daki, who looked about to speak, and edged his sickle forward half a centimeter.

"Nobody’s asking you for anything. We’re just giving you a warning."

"Oh, really?" Marcus chuckled under his breath. "And how do you plan to deliver this notice? By cutting me down? Or by handing me over to your sister again?"

Daki’s face flushed red with embarrassment.

The corner of Gyūtarō’s eye twitched, and he stopped wasting words.

Swish

A sickle shot toward Marcus’s shoulder.

He angled his body, dodged, and in the same motion grabbed the teapot off the table and hurled it at him. Gyūtarō split it in two with a single slash; the cold tea splashed across the floor as Marcus fell back toward the window.

"Why are you such an unreasonable demon?"

"Unreasonable?" He crossed his sickles and flung them forward, tracing two crimson lines through the air. "You take advantage of my sister and still expect me to be reasonable with you?!"

With a small leap, Marcus dodged the attack and used the momentum to land a quick strike on Gyūtarō’s wrist.

"Your sister’s the one who came looking for me on her own."

Gyūtarō hissed in pain; he nearly lost the sickle in his left hand, but he gritted his teeth and swung an upward slash with the right, aiming for the ribs.

"I don’t care!"

Marcus finally drew his sword, stopping the sickle with a downward cut.

Gyūtarō didn’t let up, though—he began swinging his sickles faster and faster, until they whistled through the air.

Marcus’s sword blocked and deflected the attacks in every direction, throwing off sparks.

Daki watched them tear the room apart, tapping her foot against the floor, on edge.

"Stop fighting!"

Neither of them paid her any mind.

Marcus kept defending as he backed toward the exit, Gyūtarō on him at every step, the blade passing millimeters from his nose.

"Is that all you’ve got?"

Smiling all of a sudden, Marcus twisted his wrist and dealt a hard blow with the back of his sword to the spine of the sickle, leaving Gyūtarō’s hand numb.

Then, with a quick flick of his sword’s tip, he redirected the path of Gyūtarō’s sickle, sending it slamming deep into the doorframe.

Seizing that brief lapse, Marcus drove a tremendous kick into his stomach, sending Gyūtarō flying backward—smashing through the door and sailing the whole length of the second-floor hallway before crashing down into the parlor on the ground floor.

Tables and chairs were reduced to splinters.

Luckily, there was no one down there.

The racket, however, soon drew a large crowd of onlookers who gathered in the street.

They couldn’t see anything from outside, but the commotion was enough for them. From the kinds of sounds coming through, it was clear a real fight was going on in there.

Marcus leaped through the hole, landed on an overturned table, and looked down at Gyūtarō from above.

"You want to keep going?"

Gyūtarō rose from among the pieces of wood, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and grinned from ear to ear.

"Good! I see you’ve got some strength to you! Now I won’t have to hold back for fear of killing you by accident!"

At once he loosed two blades of blood that flew toward Marcus’s limbs with an eerie red glow.

Marcus narrowed his eyes.

’So he finally decided to use his blood technique.’

Gyūtarō’s Blood Demon Art let him manipulate his own blood to make long-range cuts.

Not only did it boast tremendous power and an extremely wide reach, but the most dangerous part was that it carried a deadly poison.

This poison didn’t just hamper movement—it was also extremely lethal.

And as he recalled, if Nezuko hadn’t used her ability to purify demonic poison, Tengen wouldn’t have gotten off so easily with just the loss of one eye and one arm.

Faced with an attack like that, Marcus didn’t let his guard down.

He gripped Makomo with both hands and slashed, scattering the two blades of blood.

But Gyūtarō had already thrown his sickles, and they came pressing right on the heels of the first attack.

This time Marcus chose not to meet them head-on, so glowing blue patterns lit up his body and he vanished from the spot in an instant.

"A Blood Demon Art?!"

Gyūtarō’s eyes went wide as he searched for him, while his sickles came flying back to his hands like boomerangs.

"Looking for me?"

Marcus’s voice rang out right at his right ear.

A chill ran down his spine. He crossed his sickles in front of him and spun on his own axis at full speed.

Blood Demon Art: Rampant Arcs!

Spinning like a top, his sickles unleashed a storm of crimson slashes that tore apart everything around him.

It utterly wrecked the parlor, shattered the front door, and even wounded several of the onlookers watching from outside.

The entire street erupted in screams of panic.

It was a massacre!

And yet, when the storm of blood died down, Marcus was still standing, calm, with a faint pink mist drifting around him.

Desire Breathing, Second Form: Fox Walk

Faced with that tempest, he’d used his second form to slip through the gaps between one slash and the next.

"Onii-chan! Stop fighting! If you keep this up we won’t make it in time!" Daki’s voice rang out from the floor above.

They wouldn’t make it in time?

Marcus arched an eyebrow. In time for what?

Night had barely fallen; they could easily spend the whole evening fighting.

But Gyūtarō gave him no room to dwell on it.

"Just hold on a little longer!" he roared, furious. "I’ll be done with him soon!"

Throwing his sickles again, he slashed open his palms and shook them, and from them sprang several crimson blades.

Blood Demon Art: Flying Blood Sickles!

The blades, as if they had trackers, chased after Marcus, raining down from every direction.

Marcus dodged the sickles, but the blood blades had already cut off every route of escape.

Taking a deep breath, he drew his other sword.

Desire Breathing, Fifth Form: Crimson Curtain

In an instant, hundreds of slashes wove together in front of him into an impenetrable barrier. The blood blades crashed against it and dissolved into crimson mist.

Gyūtarō’s pupils contracted violently.

Marcus emerged from behind the curtain, the pink haze of his blades still not fully faded.

"My turn."

Swish

He vanished completely from Gyūtarō’s sight.

Desire Breathing, Third Form: Flower Passage

Turned into a blurred pink shadow, Marcus reappeared at Gyūtarō’s side.

Gyūtarō instinctively raised the sickles that had just returned to him, but Marcus’s sword was already sliding up under his arm.

First cut—arm severed!

Second cut—decapitation!

Thud!

The arm and the head dropped heavily to the floor.

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Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎

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