Chapter 147: Team 7
Natsuya didn't spend his weekends slacking off either.
Aside from setting up his systematic training academy for local Slayers, he was
busy theory-crafting ways to level up his Life Skills.
[Smithing] was the first on the workbench.
Initially unlocked by accident back when he was hammering ingots under Matsuyama
Daimon's watchful eye, the skill's utility was far broader than he'd
anticipated. It wasn't limited to forging blades and breastplates; kitchenware,
cooking pots, and daily tool repairs all fell under the same system umbrella.
Once he committed to grinding Smithing again, a quiet corner of the pavilion
courtyard was promptly converted into a makeshift forge.
Armed with his Hashira title, requisitioning high-grade Scarlet Crimson Iron
Sand and Ore directly from the supply lines was child's play. The custom
hollow-point poison cartridges he'd used to ventilate that country demon were
one of the first successful prototypes.
And he didn't stop at metalwork.
After hammering out an assortment of experimental iron implements, his curiosity
drifted toward [Sewing].
This was a skill he'd picked up back during his stay with Urokodaki Sakonji at
Mt. Sagiri. He had originally dusted it off just to resize weighted training
vests for his trainees.
Yet after watching several disciples wearing those reinforced vests casually
overwhelm higher-ranked sparring partners through sheer weight advantage, a bold
thought took root in Natsuya's brain:
Why not overhaul the standard Demon Slayer uniform entirely?
The standard Corps uniform offered decent protection against ordinary knives,
but against real demons?
To be blunt, its defensive stats were laughable.
Lower Moons tore through it like wet tissue paper, sure, but even a stray scrub
with a Power Level over thirty could shred the fabric with their bare claws. If
a piece of armor couldn't mitigate incoming damage, what was the point of
wearing it over regular clothes?
Natsuya pulled strings with the Kakushi to acquire bolts of the specialized raw
fabric used for Corps uniforms. Then, drawing on his smithing skill, he spun
microscopic filaments of Scarlet Crimson steel and interwoven flexible alloy
fibers, blending them directly into the weave.
The structural stitch pattern was reverse-engineered from the heavy battle-haori
Shinjuro had gifted him.
The resulting composite felt like a modern Kevlar-mesh tactical vest.
Breathability and flexibility remained completely uncompromised, while slash and
puncture resistance surged by an order of magnitude. It even offered slight
passive resistance against physical Blood Demon Arts.
Because of the dense metallic micro-fibers, the fabric couldn't be tailored into
skin-tight garments. Natsuya instead cut it into a loose, structured dark tunic
designed to be worn under outer gear.
He even added modular internal pockets over the vitals.
If a Slayer anticipated facing an abnormally heavy hitter, they could slide
hardened alloy trauma plates directly into the chest and rib
compartments—sacrificing a sliver of agility for a massive bump in physical
damage mitigation.
Natsuya hung a test swatch of the new weave on a wooden post and had his dojo
disciples hack at it with live blades.
Swordsmen below Power Level 30 couldn't leave a scratch.
Those under Level 40 couldn't sever the weave even while channeling Breathing
Styles.
It took a swordsman at Level 60 delivering a clean, fully committed strike with
a sharp Nichirin blade to slice through the composite.
And that was just the base tunic—without the reinforced plates slotted in. In
terms of sheer defensive utility, it made the standard issue uniform look like
carnival costume cloth.
Finally, Natsuya applied the same tailoring method to modify the white haori the
Rengoku estate had given him.
Stepping in front of the full-length mirror, he took in the result:
An outer white haori flowing over a structured, loose dark tunic, cinched at the
waist with his weapon belt holding three katanas and his gauntlets.
It looked crisp, modern, and unmistakably lethal. It even carried a distinct,
bizarrely familiar aesthetic.
Natsuya blinked at his reflection for five seconds, then it hit him:
Wait. Did I just accidentally invent a Shihakushō skin from Bleach?!
Way cooler than the standard military-collar tunic, at any rate.
Materials and forge time were limited, so Natsuya didn't produce mass batches.
He had crafted just enough yardage to outfit the active Nine Hashira. Once he
finished sewing the full set, he planned to mail them out as care packages to
his fellow Pillars.
Beyond grinding his crafting skills, Natsuya launched another radical experiment
across the Tohoku region:
The Squad System.
Under the Luminary Hashira's direct authority, a new operational doctrine was
rolled out across the Sendai sector.
Every Slayer who had cycled through his Wednesday training seminars was
systematically organized into permanent three-man cells for routine patrol and
subjugation missions.
They were grouped either by complementary style synergy or by pairing a seasoned
high-tier Slayer with two promising rookies. Every cell was assigned an official
registry number by Natsuya's Kakushi staff to track deployment success, injury
reports, and monster casualty data.
Kozura Yuhito naturally found his name on the squad roster.
In a desolate mountain pass east of Sendai.
Staring at the decapitated, disintegrating corpse of a demon, Yuhito stood in a
daze.
"You guys... are unreal..."
The demon they had just faced possessed a tricky spatial Blood Demon Art. Two
months ago, if Yuhito had run into this creature alone, he would have been flat
on his back within two exchanges. Even with his recent gains, a solo match would
have been a coin toss.
Yet working alongside the two squadmates Lord Luminary had paired him with—the
fight had ended before he could even warm up his sword arm.
His taciturn squadmate gave a clipped response: "No. You held the frontal aggro
cleanly."
"Without that, I couldn't have slipped through the blind spot of its Art."
Beside them, an orange-haired girl rolled her eyes with unvarnished irritation.
"Are you two seriously having a mutual admiration circle right now?"
"Give credit where it belongs—it's Lord Luminary's coordinated raid drills that
carried the fight."
"Hurry up and call the Kakushi so we can log out. I want to get back to the
pavilion and sleep before dawn."
Yuhito rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, looking at the two partners he'd
deployed with over the past month.
One Hinoto rank, two Tsuchinoe ranks.
Togashi Hai—silent, stoic, with an unshakable foundation in his forms.
Kugisaki Yamahana—short-tempered, razor-sharp, with absurd environmental
awareness.
Together, their combined combat effectiveness was consistently suppressing
demons that would have pushed an individual Kinoto-rank veteran to the brink.
While frontline Slayers were marveling at how manageable missions had suddenly
become, back at the Karakura Pavilion, a Kakushi liaison was running through the
month's metrics with Natsuya:
"Squad 003: roster intact, two confirmed demon subjugations."
"Squad 011: one minor injury, one Blood Demon Art user neutralized."
"Squad 008: roster intact..."
Closing the log, the Kakushi voiced a cautious observation: "Lord Luminary, the
overall rate of demon clearing across Sendai dipped slightly this month compared
to before the new doctrine was implemented."
"Sure," Natsuya replied, not looking up from his ledger. "But compared to the
month before that, the total successful clears trended upward."
"More importantly: the goal of demon slaying isn't just raw speed. It's
stability. It's sustainability."
Natsuya offered a practical breakdown to the masked logistics officer:
"We're trading a fractional delay in response time for an exponential drop in
Slayer casualties and a much higher mission clear-rate."
"Swordsmen survive long enough to gain experience, and their team synergy
compounds with every deployment."
"Compared to throwing solo Slayers into unknown territory or constantly
shuffling random strangers into emergency squads, the compounding efficiency of
permanent cells will out-scale the old meta every single time."
What was the Corps' traditional dispatch logic?
The Proximity Rule.
A demon sighting popped up? Ping the nearest low-to-mid-tier Slayer and send
them in to facecheck the brush.
If they cleared it, great.
If they went missing, dispatch two slightly higher-ranked Slayers to investigate
the disappearance.
Rinse and repeat. The cycle looped until someone finally hit a wall, at which
point HQ panicked and dispatched a Hashira.
It sounded like an efficient automated order-dispatch algorithm. In practice, it
was a meat-grinder that bled low-tier talent and wasted massive amounts of
operational time.
Half the time, three separate Slayers would sprint fifty miles only to find a
senior swordsman had already stolen the kill. The other half, they'd stumble
blindly into a Lower Moon, resulting in a wipe long before a Pillar could
arrive.
The three-man cell system dialed back the sheer territorial coverage of solo
wolves, but it safeguarded the talent pool.
First, a coordinated cell possessed the tactical redundancy to punch above its
weight class, slashing operational casualties.
Second, if an entire three-man cell was wiped out, HQ didn't need to send five
more waves of scouts to figure out what was going on. In the old days, five
batches of rookies would die before anyone realized a Hashira was needed. Under
the cell system, if an optimized squad went dark, leadership immediately knew a
high-threat entity was on the map and could deploy a Pillar on frame one.
The data proved Natsuya's thesis.
In his two months stationed in Sendai, the squad cells had secured seventeen
confirmed kills without Natsuya lifting a finger—including three Blood Demon Art
users.
Overall clear speed had dipped roughly twenty percent during the initial
transition, but Slayer mortality had fallen off a cliff.
And this month, the clear rates were already rebounding as the cells developed
synergy.
For Natsuya, the metrics brought mixed feelings:
The Good News: His trained disciples were leveling up fast, passively feeding
him steady streams of Achievement Points via the Mentorship System.
The Bad News: He wasn't leeching a single drop of direct combat XP from any of
those kills.
Worse yet, he had to manually capture high-grade demons alive, lock them in
subterranean holding pens, and stockpile them for the upcoming Final Selection
overhaul instead of executing them for instant XP drops.
Catching live mobs for quest objectives instead of farming them for loot...
It took every ounce of Natsuya's gamer discipline not to march down into the
pavilion dungeons and farm his own livestock for free stats.
☆☆☆
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