Chapter 170: The Master Without His Mask
Inside the small hut, Urokodaki knelt with his back perfectly straight, the short sword pressed against his abdomen.
He wasn’t wearing his Tengu mask, and his aged face was laid bare.
"SENSEI!!"
Tanjiro’s soul nearly left his body.
He lunged forward, sliding across the floor on his knees, and caught Urokodaki’s sword hand with both of his own.
"What are you doing?! Please, stop!"
"Stop?" Urokodaki looked at him, the rims of his eyes red.
He was mourning the integrity he had upheld his entire life.
"The disciple I trained became a demon. And you’re telling me to stop?!"
"He’s not a demon! He’s a vampire!"
Tanjiro was so frantic the words tumbled over one another. "Senpai said his kind are called vampires, and that they’re different from demons!"
"And how exactly is that any different?! Does slapping a new name on it make it a whole new species?! Does Marcus take us for fools?!"
Urokodaki swatted at Tanjiro, trying to make him let go.
"Let go of me! LET GO OF ME ALREADY!! Let me die with at least a shred of dignity!"
"He really is different, Sensei!"
No matter how much Urokodaki hit him, Tanjiro wouldn’t loosen his grip.
"Even if Senpai is a demon, he doesn’t eat humans, and he isn’t afraid of sunlight either!"
He isn’t afraid of sunlight?!
Hearing this, Urokodaki froze, stunned.
"What did you just say?!"
"You heard me!" Tanjiro nodded firmly. "The biggest difference between Senpai and demons is that he overcame the fear of sunlight!"
Urokodaki’s hand trembled as he sank into thought.
But barely two seconds later, he erupted again.
"Even so, that’s no reason to become a demon!"
The problem was, no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t pry himself free of Tanjiro’s hands. Old and frail as he was, how could he possibly win a contest of strength against Tanjiro?
The blade pricked and prodded at his abdomen, but try as he might, he couldn’t drive it in.
Urokodaki was desperate.
He gazed out the window, a lost look on his face; the morning sun burned red as fire. But his heart was frozen cold.
"At first I thought that boy might, at worst, shame me so badly I’d never be able to hold my head up in the Demon Slayer Corps again! B-But I never imagined he’d make it impossible for me to go on living at all!"
"I’ve lived more than seventy years, and I spent my whole life hunting demons. And in the end, it turns out my most treasured disciple became one of them. And of his own free will, no less!"
"Where am I supposed to hide this old face? With what dignity am I to face the Master? And when I die... how am I supposed to face the old comrades who went before me?!"
Tanjiro stayed silent, but he didn’t let go.
Zenitsu was still planted in the doorway, wanting to come closer but not daring to, afraid of upsetting Urokodaki even more.
"U-Um... old man... please don’t get so worked up... let’s talk this through calmly..."
"There’s nothing to talk about!" Urokodaki shot him a piercing glare.
Without the mask, his features looked extraordinarily gentle. But combined with his current tone and behavior, the effect was terrifying.
"Who are you?"
"I-I’m... I’m Zenitsu! Agatsuma Zenitsu! Practitioner of Thunder Breathing! Disciple of Kuwajima Jigoro!"
Zenitsu blurted out his entire introduction in one breath, then shrank back.
"And... it’d be a lot better if you put the knife down first. It’s pretty dangerous."
"Jigoro’s disciple?"
Urokodaki looked him over carefully, his attention drawn above all to that familiar golden-scaled haori.
Suddenly, his face filled with suspicion.
"Did that old man send you here to watch me make a fool of myself?! Speak!"
Zenitsu: "..."
"Sensei..." Tanjiro sighed, resigned. "He came with me. His sensei almost certainly doesn’t know anything about this yet."
"He doesn’t know..."
Urokodaki’s expression suddenly turned lonely.
"He doesn’t know now, but sooner or later he’ll find out. Sooner or later... the whole world will know."
"And when that time comes... who knows if that old man will still want to acknowledge this old comrade of his."
Zenitsu hurried to reassure him: "Please don’t worry, my sensei isn’t the type to get carried away. You’re one thing, and the Demon Pillar is another; he won’t lump it all together."
"And what would you know?!" Urokodaki glared daggers at him again. "That crotchety old man you call a sensei is far more stubborn than I am."
"Well... yeah, my sensei is pretty stubborn," Zenitsu said, a little indignant. "But he’d never overreact the way you are."
"Me, overreacting? If this happened to your sensei, you’d see just what ’overreacting’ really looks like!" Urokodaki snorted coldly. "You know your sensei less than I know the nail on my own pinky!"
Having chewed Zenitsu out, he turned to look at Inosuke, who was crouched in front of him.
"And what mountain did this boar spirit crawl out of?"
Tanjiro: "..."
Zenitsu: "..."
Inosuke couldn’t have cared less about what he said.
He squatted down in front of Urokodaki without the slightest ceremony and tilted his mask to get a closer look at him.
"Old man, your belly’s bleeding."
Urokodaki: "..."
"Doesn’t it hurt?"
Urokodaki’s eye twitched. "First tell me who you are."
"The magnificent Inosuke-sama! Hashibira Inosuke! The strongest man in the world!"
Inosuke slapped his own chest, then pointed at the knife buried in the old man’s gut.
"You’re doing it wrong. Seppuku is a horizontal cut, and you’re sticking it in vertical. That way you won’t open yourself up, you’ll gut yourself! I only gut things when I’m making dinner."
Urokodaki was trembling from head to toe with rage.
"Y-You..."
"INOSUKE, SHUT UP!!!" Tanjiro and Zenitsu shouted in unison.
"Hmph."
Inosuke snorted, hugged his swords, and hunkered down off to the side, muttering, "It’s the truth, though. If he can’t even stab himself properly..."
Urokodaki took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He lowered his gaze to the blade lodged in his stomach, then to Tanjiro’s hands, which gripped his own tightly.
"Let go."
"I won’t."
"Let go!"
"Master, will you please hear me out to the end?"
Seeing that his sensei truly wanted to die, tears began to well up in Tanjiro’s eyes.
"Tonight... Senpai almost died!"
He almost died?!
Urokodaki went rigid, and the hand holding the knife loosened without his realizing it.
"What do you mean?!"
Just remembering it, Tanjiro nearly burst into tears. "Senpai got his head cut off!"
His head got cut off?!
Urokodaki shot to his feet, turned the knife outward, and put on an even fiercer expression.
"Who?! Who did it?!"
His instinctive rage made him forget all about the seppuku... until it clicked.
"Wait just a moment...! Didn’t you just say that boy became a demon?!"
He grabbed Tanjiro by the shoulders, hard.
"What did they cut it off with?! Was it a Nichirin sword?! It wasn’t a Nichirin blade, was it?!"
Now it was Tanjiro’s turn to be caught off guard. He pointed at the short knife in Urokodaki’s hands. "Sensei, you... you’re not planning to cut yourself open anymore?"
"Argh! Who cares whether I cut myself or not! How is Marcus right now? Did someone really cut him because they mistook him for a demon?"
Tanjiro sniffled and said haltingly:
"Senpai’s fine now. It was Muzan who ambushed him and cut off his head. Thank goodness he’d already turned into a demon beforehand; otherwise he’d already be stiff and cold as a stone."
MUZAN!!!
Urokodaki’s eyes went wide as saucers. "Muzan ambushed him?!"
"Please don’t worry, Sensei!" Tanjiro quickly added. "Then Senpai came back to life and cut off Muzan’s head!"
Urokodaki’s eyes lit up.
"Muzan’s dead?!"
"Ah, no, he got away."
"What do you mean he got away, when his head was cut off?"
"Once they reach the rank of Upper Moon, they always have some way to guard against decapitation, and there are even those who no longer fear being beheaded by a Nichirin sword. Senpai’s servants are a good example."
Too much information at once. Urokodaki started to feel dizzy.
Who cut off whose head? What does he mean an Upper Moon doesn’t fear decapitation? And on top of that... where did that boy get servants like these... Upper Moons, no less?
Swaying on his feet, he grabbed hold of Tanjiro tightly and looked him dead in the eyes.
"You’re going to explain to me right now, in every last detail, just what the hell that ungrateful brat is plotting!"
__________
Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎
And don’t forget to comment, I wanna know if you liked the Chapter 👀
______
And if PS aren’t your thing but you still want more Chapters...
P-a-t-r-e-o-n → Athome790