"Poor thing."
Based on the first impression left by this mutilated corpse, Inori concluded that this era most likely had no conventional firearms—a world where supernatural ability ran rampant in place of gunpowder. It wasn't just the body. The whole area bore the traces of a fierce recent battle, and there was not a single scorch mark, blast crater, or bullet scar anywhere. No smell of gunpowder in the air.
Probably some world full of magic creatures and arcane powers, then. One she'd seen before, maybe. Maybe not.
The sight was genuinely unpleasant, but Inori felt nothing particular about it. She crouched down over the blood-soaked earth—the long streamers of her Goldfish Outfit apparently took deep offense at the filth below and lifted themselves accordingly—and bent to examine the boy's severed head, which lay alone in the dirt. The boy had only just died. Whoever killed him almost certainly hadn't gone far. She had to be careful.
She reached out and gently closed his terrified eyes. Let out a slow breath. Turned her gaze toward the vast dark stretch of forest ahead—her eyes could cut through the darkness, but they still couldn't show her a road out of here.
She turned back to the body—and noticed that the dead hand was still clutching a sword.
A grey-silver katana. Not particularly ornate, but the material was something she'd never encountered before. Inori was a girl born in the year 2039 who had experience in terrorism—extremely well-versed in firearms, explosives, and vehicles, and barely familiar with bladed weapons at all. But even she could tell, at a glance, that this was no ordinary iron.
Human bodies stiffen after death, locking whatever position they held at the final moment. It took some effort to pry the dead boy's fingers open and remove the blade—and in that moment, the corner of her eye caught something on his uniform.
...Heavily blood-stained, yes. But there on the back of the black fabric, still stark white against all of it—a single Japanese character, large and unmistakable.
—Could that possibly—
In the space of two seconds, an avalanche of thoughts cascaded through Inori's mind. A hypothesis crystallized—implausible, and yet utterly impossible to disprove. She went still in place for two full seconds, lips parting, breathing faster—until the moonlight caught in the depths of her crimson eyes and she spoke the thought aloud, barely above a whisper.
"Is this world... Demon Slayer?"
A black uniform with the Corps' character on the back. A blade forged from special material that had absorbed sunlight. The brutality and efficiency of the kills. That leg—no human was strong enough to destroy a joint like that, and no animal was precise enough to target the knee deliberately. The conclusion was already obvious.
This boy had been a member of the Demon Slayer Corps. He'd been killed by a demon.
She had come to the world of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
—Inori-chan, did your foresight ability go off again?
—No... this one's different, Mana.
Inori stood, holding the Nichirin Sword, something wry in her expression.
Demon Slayer wasn't a series she knew well. She'd watched the anime on a whim, carried along by the hype—the fight sequences had been impressive, but beyond that it hadn't grabbed her—and the anime had ended right as the plot was really beginning to unfold. She'd never had time to sit through the manga on top of everything else.
This world's Taisho era, demon-ridden as it was, couldn't really be called an alternate world in the usual sense—it was simply Japan without high technology, where the Demon Slayer Corps fought with swords and cold steel rather than anything modern.
—I don't know what happens here going forward. I'm sorry. But I know this is Japan's Taisho era.
—We keep going further back, don't we? 2039 to 1999, and now the early twentieth century? What's next, the mythological age?
Mana offered her commentary.
—It's different, though. The Morioh we were in wasn't our 1999, and this isn't our Taisho Japan—it's a parallel world all the same. And most importantly: this is a world that actually has demons in it.
—Demons? Oh—!!
—What are you so shocked about? That sword of yours cut a cutting-edge satellite right out of orbit. A few blood demons aren't going to slow you down.
Mana Ouma was a woman who had gone toe-to-toe with the evolutionary will of all biological life. She wasn't about to be frightened of a handful of supernatural monsters.
The two of them were mid-exchange when the sound reached Inori's ears—and simultaneously, the Nameless Monster gave the faintest contraction, like an animal's hackles going up.
Her attention sharpened. Footsteps. Unhurried. Careless.
"Hmm? I followed the smell of blood and here you are. Didn't expect to find a fellow demon."
An unpleasant voice.
From behind a large tree stepped the ugliest thing Inori had encountered since arriving in this world. Skin the grey-white color of old ash. Distorted bone structure, warped features. One eye visibly bulging from its socket, clouded and uneven. Expression locked into a crooked, expectant leer.
And it was, unfortunately, the first living thing she'd met in this world.
"Hey—hand me that food of yours, would you?"
Inori didn't answer. Just raised an eyebrow. The demon didn't seem immediately hostile.
The red and yellow streamers of her outfit drifted idly, as if with some kind of intent. And then she understood—the demon had mistaken her for one of its own kind.
Demon Slayer's world was stark black-and-white: no half-demon hybrids, nothing like the grey-zone creatures that appeared in other supernatural Japanese settings. So her appearance—this impossible, inhuman beauty in impossible, inhuman clothes—wasn't easy to explain away as human. Inori nearly smiled, but kept it back. Let's see where this goes.
"Not willing to share?"
The demon had noticed she wasn't answering. It leered and stepped closer. To be honest, even through the warping that demonic transformation had done to its senses, this strangely-dressed creature had stirred feelings it hadn't experienced since the days when it had been human—she was beautiful, adorable, and frankly magnetic in a way that made it want to possess her immediately.
"I'll split the food with you fifty-fifty. All you have to do is stay by my side from now on, nice and obedient. What do you say?"
The grin twisted wider, and even through the damage done to its eyes, the malice in them came through clearly.
Then its gaze dropped to her hand—and stopped.
She was holding a Nichirin Sword. A Demon Slayer's sword.
The demon couldn't understand what this bird-fish hybrid female demon thought she was doing handling a Nichirin blade. Those things were forged from ore that had absorbed enough sunlight to become a living poison to their kind. Wasn't she afraid of being burned?
"Hey... are you a new one? Just turned?"
"Don't go touching dangerous things you don't understand! Even if you don't want to share with me—!"
"I'm not a demon, you know."
Inori smiled at it, bright as anything.
"...What? No—that's impossible—!"
The demon's jaw fell open. The Demon Slayer Corps wore a specific uniform, and she certainly wasn't in that—but nothing about this woman looked like something a normal human being would wear.
"Hey—are you actually human?!"
(③)
At this closer range, even a lower-class demon like this one could tell that the girl in front of it was not the same as its own kind. But her scent was nothing like a normal human's either.
Every competing impulse—confusion, desire, wariness—collapsed instantly into a single, overwhelming drive. Greed and hunger, purely.
Because the smell of her. He had no words for it. She was literally making his mouth water. This had to be what they called Marechi Blood—the rare blood type that, consumed by a demon, could send their power soaring beyond anything they could achieve otherwise. The stuff of legend among their kind.
Eating this pink-haired girl could put me in the Twelve Kizuki. For any demon, that prospect was impossible to resist.