Chapter 134: In one piece… or in pieces
Tilting her head, Ivy wiggled her fingers.
...She’d gotten strong.
So much stronger!
Truth be told, she hadn’t expected her master’s blood to be so nourishing. Confident in his immense vitality, he’d often share a little of his own blood with Tamayo, Kozu, and her, so they could have an extra meal every now and then.
And over these past few months, drinking it had made her lose a bit of control over her own strength.
Remembering how she’d latched onto her master’s wrist to suck out his blood, she couldn’t help squirming with embarrassment.
"Why’re you turning red like a teakettle?" Pearl tossed out beside her, mimicking Marcus’s tone. "Time to fight, mommy~"
"M-Mmm~!"
Meanwhile, Kaigaku—writhing in pain—nearly lost his mind watching them keep chatting like nothing was wrong.
"You... bitches!"
Furious and barely able to speak, he took a combat stance. But before he could even steady his breathing, he suddenly felt his right wrist go taut.
Stunned, he looked down.
A white spider rested on his elbow.
... No!
Not just one... THERE WERE HUNDREDS!
A swarm of spiders had crept up the threads coiled around his sword without him noticing; they already blanketed his entire arm and were starting to spread to the rest of his body!
His head snapped up.
Across from him, the voluptuous woman’s fingers were moving, countless impossibly fine threads connected to her fingertips.
"Wh-wh-when...?" (Since when?)
Horrified, he instinctively tried to bolt.
But he couldn’t move! The threads were thin, but they were unbelievably tough! They cinched around his body so tightly they left him completely immobile.
He looked back and forth in disbelief between the two she-demons. Under the moonlight, neither of those beautiful faces showed the faintest expression. They only watched him with indifference.
"Did you bring the medicine?"
"Yes!"
"Then I’ll cut!"
"I’ll stop the bleeding!"
"Ready!"
Without any further preamble, the threads wound around Kaigaku’s arm suddenly snapped tight.
And before his horrified eyes...
!!!
His left arm was lopped off without the slightest resistance!
And the instant the blood gushed out, a burst of white threads shot from the other girl’s hand. Quick as lightning, they lashed around the stump in the blink of an eye. The bleeding stopped dead.
Watching his own arm go flying through the air, Kaigaku’s eyes flushed red all at once. Fear and the shadow of death swallowed him whole.
And faced with such a disadvantage, in such a desperate situation, his first reaction wasn’t to fight for his life. Just the opposite: gritting through the excruciating pain, he resorted to his mouth!
"W-waih!!!" (Wait!!!)
"I-I... I’ll c-cooperate! I’m going with you guyh!" (I... I’ll cooperate! I’m going with you guys!)
"It’h a mihunderhtanding, it’h all a mihunderhtanding!" (It’s a misunderstanding, it’s all a misunderstanding!)
Pearl narrowed her eyes. "So now you’re suddenly willing to cooperate?"
Hope lit up Kaigaku’s eyes, and he nodded with all his might. His knees buckled in an attempt to kneel, foiled only by Ivy’s threads, which kept his body suspended in the air.
And then...
Splash!
"AAAAH!!!"
Accompanied by an even shriller scream, Kaigaku’s right arm came off too!
As the severed limb spun through the air and blood spattered, Pearl’s silk cocoon wrapped around it instantly and cut off the bleeding.
"I’m sorry, Mr. Kaigaku." Ivy looked at him with a smile. "But the master gave us two options. Take you back in one piece, or cut off your five limbs and bring you back."
Splash!
And as she said it, Kaigaku’s left leg parted from his body.
Five... five limbs?!
WHAT FIVE LIMBS?!
’Where am I supposed to get five limbs?!’
Only in that instant did Kaigaku grasp the terrifying meaning of what Ivy had been saying.
!
His pupils contracted.
A fear like none he’d ever felt, the deepest and most primal a man can feel, crawled up from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
He shook his head like a man possessed! "N-mo! D-don’ do ih!" (No! Don’t do it!)
But that desperate plea wasn’t nearly enough to break Ivy’s resolve to carry out her master’s orders.
"Easy, I’ll make it quick."
Splash!
And with those words, he lost his right leg too.
"AH——!!!"
Reduced to little more than a torso, suspended in the air like a dismantled doll, Kaigaku kept shaking his head despite it all.
His terrified eyes, brimming with tears of blood, were screaming a plea.
He wanted to keep at least that! At least his last shred of a man’s dignity!
Ivy frowned, a little uncomfortable. And just as she was about to act, Pearl stopped her cold.
"Don’t cut off too much, or it’s a pain to stop the bleeding afterward."
"But..."
Ivy looked at her uneasily and uttered some words that filled Kaigaku with a lethal mix of outrage and humiliation.
"It’s pretty short to begin with..."
"Just the tip is enough!"
"It’ll be tricky... but I’ll give it a shot."
With a light tug of Ivy’s pinky, a little scrap of flesh the size of a fingernail came loose from Kaigaku’s body.
"Aghh*@#! AHHHHHHH!!!"
Finally, amid screams of agony, Kaigaku lost consciousness.
"He passed out..."
"Figures." Pearl rolled her eyes. "Did you already forget last time, when you accidentally squeezed... that part... on the master, and we ended up with our asses beaten swollen?"
"I-It was an accident...! I—" Ivy, her face flushed, was already gearing up to defend herself when her expression suddenly changed. "Someone’s coming!"
Pearl turned serious too. "Let’s go!"
A mass of threads sprang from her hands and wrapped Kaigaku up completely, leaving only his mouth and nose exposed. Along the way, the same threads gathered up the severed limbs and the Nichirin sword, and even tore up the layer of bloodstained earth from the ground.
Turned into one big ball, he hung in the air and got dragged along as the two of them broke into a run.
"Ah! Pearl, wait for me!"
"Why are you following me?! I’ll take him, you go report to the master!"
"Right!"
Meanwhile.
At the headquarters of the Demon Slayer Corps.
In the front courtyard.
Marcus sat beside the stone table, a cup cradled in his hands and a broad smile on his face.
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