Journal Entry 5.5

"Are you sure about this, Yuto?" Himari asked as she handed me her sword.

I gripped the yasutsuna tightly and began channeling Light Ferry before responding with a curt "Completely". Light Ferry engulfed the sword in a translucent golden light, not even stopping at the hilt with it's reinforcement. I'd learned to refine the enforcement rather than relying on the wild burst of enhancement I'd done when my powers first manifested.

I knew what, and almost importantly, who Eparsi was now and that allowed a few select advantages. Along the standard physical enhancement, I covered the blade and hilt in what could be best described as a mystical sheath that would ward off the effects of Eparsi's rotting energy. Then I started off on the most important part; sharpening. I put layer after layer of energy into the edge of the blade until it became a slight struggle to maintain. Underneath the first layer of rot and "oil" Eparsi had an incredibly durable hide, far tougher than the one Shuten had. I couldn't afford wasting time hacking away at one area to make an injury stick.

"Is the arena ready?" I asked.

"Just about." Kuesu answered as she landed next to me on the roof.

We both looked out from our perch on the apartment complex to see the rest of the Demon Slayers corralling Eparsi into a graveyard. I'd shaken off the affects of our… connection, and so had he apparently with how lively he'd become. With the help of directions and warnings from Hitsugi the rest of the Demon Slayers, Amare and her team, and my friends were easily able to corral him where they wanted. Not to say the job wasn't dangerous though, as evidence by Sorina who was nursing the stump where her left arm had been after taking a blow for Ageha.

And that had honestly been the hardest part to convincing the others to go along with my plan. Eparsi was strong, stronger than almost any Lord, but it was self-evident that, even if it were just us Demon Slayers, if we all piled on he would have no chance. But such a tactic risked him escalating too far, and while most of us would survive one of his tactics there was also a chance one of us could be seriously injured or even killed.

After what had happened with Shuten, I couldn't really stand that. Besides, I felt this had to be done personally now.

Eparsi looked momentarily confused as everyone rapidly backed off, leaving him in the middle of the graveyard. Until he saw me land and started walking towards him.

He was at full attention now, easily towering over me at eight-feet tall, and with his tail parallel to the ground, tip lightly twitching occasionally.

"You know why I'm here." I said, before setting my sword into a guard position. "And now I know why you are here; let us end this quickly."

The fluid where a mouth would have been on a human rippled and warped slightly and I was surprised to hear a strange guttural sound from him. And doubly so when I recognized and could actually understand the strange, yet familiar, cadence of noise.

'So, I can speak demon now.' I thought with some wryness. It didn't translate well to human language, like, at all. Eparsi had given me the equivalent of exuberant acceptance of my challenge. I couldn't respond, my mouth simply didn't have the experience to make such sounds, so instead I gave him a nod and approached steadily, as did he, until we were both in range.

What followed in the next dozen or so seconds wasn't so much a wave of violence as it was an avalanche of relentless attacks from Eparsi that I had to constantly parry and counter attack as our fight raged across the graveyard. The headstones didn't impede either of our movement, and even allowed me some choice stepping stones before it quickly destroyed them. But the fight was far from clean.

I twisted my body to the left, turning what would have been a direct hit into barely a graze on my shoulder before taking a swing at his open side. Only to score an equally grazing hit as his tail lashed at where my open side had been.

In less than a second I made my hand glow like a dwarf star, blinding him before detonating the contained energy to force us to separate with a bang. The explosion had burned my entire sleeve off, but I did get some breathing room to think. Chips of concrete littered the ground and streaks of grass had been rotted down to smoldering mud. My jack and shirt were almost tatters at this point, and I had some fresh cuts crisscrossing my body from the close calls. Eparsi, on the other hand, still looked fresh in the fight to the untrained, only someone with a keen eye could see the subtle weariness in his movements and the numerous needle thin but wide slices in his body, all going deep into his hide and damaging bone.

I knew everything about him, the way it moved, how it fought, and where it was weakest. And through out the fight it had clearly demonstrated it knew the same of me. Us just throwing ourselves at each other like this with everything we had would just end things in a deadly draw at best, a bittersweet pyrrhic victory that I had no interest in. Even with the new found… acknowledgement I had for Eparsi, I needed to use a new strategy and make it's impact decisive, he would adapt to anything less.

Our last exchange was swift and brutal. I let loose with another blast, this one in the shape of an arc that explode with more light than force and I swung hard and wide in the same instance. Eparsi saw through the attempt, ducking where my swing was headed before coming up and elbowing my head hard, making me see stars. I stumbled back from the hit, nearly tripping and letting the yasutsuna slip out of my hand slightly as I caught myself. Eparsi saw the opportunity and lunged forward, the earth beneath him cracking from the force of it as he extends his arms forward with claws easily capable of ripping through stone and steel.

Which was when I stopped feigning, pushed past the mild pain from his blow and slid deep into his guard with the sword firmly gripped in hand.

Past the oily covering of now chitin black oil and rot I think I saw an expression of genuine surprise as I impaled it through the torso with my yasutsuna. It then turned into a shuddering gasp of pain as I gripped the hilt with both hands and cut upwards until the sword exited through his right shoulder.

It swayed on it's feet with most of it's torso partially cut in half before falling backwards and hitting the ground with a soft, wet thump. The rotting aura and substance protecting his body began to schlop off and fall away in chips as his life fluid began to soak the earth around us.

I looked down at it, wheezing and gurgling with a pained smile on it's toothy maw before shaking my head. Stepping over, planting my feet on either side of it's torso, I aimed my sword downward and pointed lower and more to the center of where a human heart would be. I plunged downward and felt the katana slide neatly through the ablative armor of bone that was his rib cage and pierced his heart.

The aura subsided completely then, revealing the true physical form of cored muscle and rough hide that began to cool rapidly, his shark-like maw trapped in the rictus of a smile now. After waiting a few more seconds to make sure there was no deception and feeling for him with my other senses before stepping back, I teetered on my feet and fell back onto my ass, gasping for breath.

I felt relief, past all the pain, aches, both emotional and physical; I was genuinely relaxing under the light of the pale moon and with a rotting demon corpse beside me inside of Atarashī bokusō-chi cemetery.

Something struck me as odd though. I'd expected everyone to rush over and when I looked back at them the only ones rushing were my friends, Himari and Kuesu at the forefront of the charge. But everyone else was hanging back. I couldn't understand what they could be waiting for.

"Ugh, what an unsightly thing to wake up to." A woman said, I somehow knew that on an instinctual level, her melodic voice burning through both my ears and mind.

I looked directly up and saw… something beautiful. She was so much like her mother, nigh-perfect curvy body accentuated by a pair of snow white wings and a spaded tail. But that's where the similarities ended, with complete symmetry one side of her body had pale skin with jet-black hair that reached her waist and a crimson eye. While the other half had tanned, almond skin with white hair and a pure white eye that seemed to look right through me.

She extended one hand and blasted Epari's body with a pillar of intense fire. By the time I blinked past the intense light of the attack it's body had been completely incinerated. Only a patch of slightly stained and superheated earth was left behind.

"Ha." I couldn't help letting out a short laugh as she looked down at me, before a sudden bout of dizziness came, my injuries and fatigue beginning to overtake me. "You sure took your sweet time." I mumbled out before pitching backwards into the dirt just as Himari and Kuesu reached me.