35 hours to go.

The projection of Muzan within Enmu's subconscious has been talking to him for an hour by this point. Due to the way Susamaru had influenced Enmu in the previous level, this projection managed to convince Enmu that everything was alright in the real world, and that he had already won. "And so with that," Muzan told him. "You have completed your task, Lower Moon One."

"Thank you, Muzan-sama," Enmu replied as he bowed to him. "Once I kill this girl, I will have fulfilled my final duties on your behalf. I am eternally grateful for your support and for making me a demon, my master." By now, the projection of Nezuko had been knocked out for quite some time. "Now I await Mr. Charles and his attack on her inner core. We have succeeded! We have finally rid the world of those pesky Kamado siblings and their allies! Soon, you will take the fight right to the leaders of the Demon Slayer Corps themselves, and when you do, you will be unstoppable, Muzan-sama!"

"Why thank you," he smiled back. "You always have been a very loyal servant of mine, even in the face of your death at my own hands."

Back on the second level of the dream, Susamaru prepared the explosives required to destroy the entire hotel room and initiate the Kick Event necessary to wake everyone up. As she placed down a time bomb using the watch she originally had on her wrist, she said to herself, "Here's hoping nothing goes wrong on the third level."

On the first level of the dream, Tanjiro killed two armed projections by slicing their necks open as they tried to tackle him to the ground. "They're becoming more numerous… This is gonna be a problem. I still need to hold them off until it's time."

34 hours to go.

On the third level, James managed to find the boundary of Enmu's dream after running into the invisible border on a sidewalk. "Ah, here we go!" He then took out his sword and sliced through before crawling into his subconscious. "So, here it is…" Within Enmu's subconscious was a dark and foreboding forest, with almost no sources of light present in the sky. As James tried to look around, he almost walked into a tree, cursing to himself, "Fuck! I wish I brought a damn light with me! I can't see shit in this place!"

As he continued to walk further into the forest, he heard an animal snarl at him from behind, causing him to turn around and come face-to-face with a large bear. The bear once again yelled at him with a mighty roar before charging at James, who immediately pulled out his revolver and emptied it into the bear as he backed away. After taking a few more steps, the bear fell to the ground, rapidly losing blood from the six bullet wounds he endured.

"Fuck, that was too God damn close…" As James reloaded his revolver, he looked to the tree above him and saw an owl standing on one of the branches. Once it began to hoot, he walked away, going in the same direction he had been going in before, whatever that was. After walking for a few more minutes, however, he yawned. "God, I've been awake for about 14 hours now in here… Maybe I could get a short nap in before I continue." He then plopped down below a tree and closed his eyes, clutching his revolver in one hand and his sword in another just in case something happened.

28 hours to go.

James was awoken by a rustling sound near him. As he immediately sprinted up and onto his feet, he looked around in the darkness, his revolver and sword at the ready. "Who's there? I'm armed!"

Then, a familiar voice called out to him. "James, here."

"What the fuck?!" James looked around for the source of the female voice. "How did… What?!"

"Here!"

"Where?! Where are you?!"

"Here!"

Then, James saw the source of the voice, and immediately dropped his gun and sword. "What… No way…"

The source of the voice was in fact Julia, his deceased wife. She was dressed for the outdoors and held a rifle in her hands. "Why didn't you save me?"

Confused, James asked her, "What?"

"I said," Julia then told him as she aimed at his knee and shot it, sending him to the ground. "Why the fuck didn't you save me?!"

"What the fuck, Julia?!" James was horrified that a projection of his own wife was attacking him. "How are you here?! Enmu ain't never even seen ya!"

"I've been following you," she explained before she shot him again in the shoulder, causing him to scream again. "I've managed to worm my way into every dream you've ever had or invaded ever since I was murdered. You just never noticed me because I slipped into the background, my love."

"Please," James begged her. "Don't do this! I need you to keep me alive! I don't give a fuck if you're a projection! I still don't want to hurt you! If you kill me, everyone on board that train in the real world will die!"

"Too bad," Julia replied. "You should have thought of that before your pregnant wife and your son were murdered by a ghoul."

"Damn it, no!" James then closed his eyes and shot twice in her general direction, both hoping he hit her and he missed her and feeling deeply conflicted. When he reopened them, Julia was lying on the ground, mortally wounded. "Oh my God, Julia! Julia, no!" As he picked up her body, he wept, his tears falling onto her blood-stained clothes. "I'm sorry, Julia… I'm sorry I couldn't save you, our unborn child, or Henry. I'm sorry I wasn't there."

Julia looked up at him and smiled. "I've lost… I must accept it, my love." She then weakly cradled his cheek and wiped it of tears. "James, treat your fiancée well. She deserves it. Remember, despite everything, I will always love you." She then closed her eyes and died in his arms as his wounds healed up and he began to be able to move around more.

James quietly set her body down and wiped away the tears he had shed. "I will always love you as well. Thank you, Julia." He then took a deep breath. "I will treat Susamaru well, just as you commanded to me." He then looked in the opposite direction. "Now, I must find Enmu's core!"

26 hours to go.

After two hours of combing through the woods, James finally stumbled on Enmu's inner core. It was a black mass shaped like a sphere that levitated above the ground, and James only knew he had found it when he bumped into it and felt around it. "What the Hell? This… This is his inner core?" He then pulled out his sword. "It has to be, but I can't kill it yet, not unless I want to wake Enmu up prematurely or send him into Limbo. As much as I'd like to send the fucker there, it would jeopardize everythin'."

He decided to sit down beside the core and take another nap, figuring that when he woke up, he would manage to kill a bit more time.

14 hours to go.

James awoke to the same darkness that surrounded him before. As he checked his watch, he said to himself, "God damn, I slept for 12 hours straight? What the fuck… I hope this don't affect my sleep in the real world." Suddenly, he was shaken by what felt like an earthquake, and as he looked around, he wondered what was causing the rumbling. "What the Hell?! What's goin' on in the dream level above us?!"

As it turns out, on the second level, an armed projection had managed to rappel down the side of the hotel and break into the room via the window. Susamaru immediately grabbed her gun and fired at the intruder, but missed. As he dove to avoid being shot, he hit Enmu's body and shook it. Susamaru yelled, "Get the fuck outta here!"

"Not until you die," yelled back the projection. Susamaru and the projection then began to wrestle as she struggled to rip her shirt off and spawn her extra arms. Finally, after a full minute of wrestling on the ground, Susamaru was able to spawn her extra arms and twist the projection's neck to the point of snapping it, killing him instantly.

"Piece of shit," she told his corpse before she picked it up and tossed it out of the window. "Come on… The time limit can't come soon enough…"

A few minutes to go.

After standing around and waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, James finally prepared himself to kill Enmu's inner core by slicing it open with his sword. Meanwhile, on the second level, Susamaru readied the explosives in the hotel room after fighting off the last two intruders, who had also rappelled down and into the hotel room's window, and on the first level, Tanjiro fought off a wave of intruders as he also prepared to commit what was effectively a suicide bombing to wake everyone up.

"Okay," James then said to himself as he looked at his watch. "It's time." He then took a deep breath and sliced into Enmu's core, immediately triggering instability in the third level of the dream and causing the ground to shake again. "Here it comes!" As the earth below him rumbled and began to split open, the core let out an intense shining light before it exploded. "Fuck!" The explosion instantly killed James within the dream and flattened the forest, having the power of thousands of tons of dynamite.

On the second level, Susamaru set off the explosives as she shouted through the barricaded door that kept away other intruders on foot, "THIS IS GOODBYE, FUCKERS!" The explosion immediately vaporized the room and killed both her and all the would-be intruders standing outside and trying to get in.

On the first level, Tanjiro, having been stabbed and shot several times and gravely injured by the armed projections, crawled to the explosives he had set as blood poured from his wounds. "Come on… Please, God, let me reach the explosives! I have to…" After pushing himself forward a few feet, he finally was able to reach the trigger just as an armed projection shot him again in the back. "Agh, fuck! No more!" He then weakly pressed the trigger and yelled out, "FOR NEZUKO!" After saying that, an explosion wiped out the entire warehouse, killing him and all the projections inside.

In the real world, Inosuke and Nezuko had managed to hold off as Enmu kept trying to put them to sleep, only for Nezuko to repeatedly commit suicide by gunshot in every dream she was put into as Inosuke either dodged his attempts or sliced his own neck if Enmu succeeded. As they dodged hands of flesh that tried to grab them in the expanded engine car, Nezuko yelled out, "Inosuke-kun, watch out!"

She then pushed him down and sliced two hands that came within centimeters of grabbing a hold of him. Inosuke yelled out, "Hey, what the Hell was that for?!"

"Your ass was gonna get grabbed by those hands," Nezuko replied as she helped him up. "Wait… Why aren't they attacking anymore?!"

Indeed, after she had sliced the hands away, Enmu seemed to practically give up, as if he no longer tried to resist their attacks. "Maybe he's too much of a chickenshit!"

"That's not it! I think Colby-san's plan worked! He killed Enmu inside the dream world!"

"Then why the fuck's he still alive here?!"

"He won't be for long!" The two then jumped up into the coal car, with Nezuko telling Inosuke, "Attack with me just in case he resists somehow, got it?! Then I want you to slice the flesh first so I can strike the bone and put this bastard in the ground!"

"A good plan," Inosuke nodded before he jumped up to attack. "I like it!" He then aimed down at Enmu's neck. "Breath of the Beast, Fourth Fang: Slice and Dice!" His attack perfectly exposed the neck bone, and as he jumped out of the engine car, Nezuko jumped up to begin her attack.

"Father, oniichan… Allow me to make you proud," Nezuko thought to herself. "Lend me your strength, and guide me to victory! Here goes!"

5 years prior

"Father," asked a younger Nezuko when she was just about nine years old. "Can I ask you a question?" The two were outside watching Tanjiro chop firewood in the middle of the summer.

As she tugged on her father's haori, he smiled and replied. "Of course, Nezuko."

"Can I learn the Dance of the Fire God too?"

Tanjuro's eyes widened a bit in surprise. "Really? You want to know how to do it too? You know, you don't have to. Your brother already knows it."

"But I want to," Nezuko replied. "I wanna be just like oniichan!"

Her youthful excitement and enthusiasm humored Tanjuro, and he smiled as he told her, "You know what… Why not? Having another child in the family learn the Dance of the Fire God isn't a bad thing."

"DANCE OF THE FIRE GOD!" Nezuko then successfully landed a fatal circular blow onto Enmu's exposed neck bone. "AZURE HEAVEN!" With one quick motion, Enmu was finally defeated, and any remaining flesh in the passenger cars was simultaneously wiped out by Kyojuro and Zenitsu as the two sliced their way through every car at once in opposite directions.

The first phase of the battle was finally over.

However, as Patrick Cleburne and his remaining soldiers jumped off the train to avoid being killed, the general and Fourth Knight of the Moon said to his men, "This fight is not yet over! We must group up with the second squad! I need a runner to go to them and send them here!"

One of his soldiers asked, "Is that one Muzan Moon comin' too, sir?"

"Akaza?" Patrick then looked at the forest beside the train tracks. "Yeah, he should be."

...

TAISHO SECRET #5

Hey there! Time for some more hot, steamy, and mostly-useless knowledge from the author! Today, we are going to discuss two improbable tales of survival from the annals of the history of the Demon Slayer Corps, both from the recent history of the corps. The human spirit is strong enough to allow us to survive things we probably should not be able to, and these stories are a testament to that fact.

In 1895, a slayer named Umezu Kenkichi who was also in the Imperial Japanese Army was fighting in the Hsinchu Campaign on Taiwan when he became separated from his platoon after an attack by Chinese demons from the mainland caused chaos and disorder in the ranks on July 7 of that year. He would spend the next day evading the same group of demons while also fending off dehydration. On July 8, he was attacked by two demons, managing to fend them off and kill them but also falling off of a cliff in the process, breaking both of his legs. Despite being gravely injured, he held on for three more painful and humid summer days until he was finally rescued on July 11. The demon attack was covered up by the government, and he was soon after discharged from the army, becoming a Kakushi due to his injuries.

Cut forward to the year 1904, this time in the Russo-Japanese War. Slayer Momomiya Shuichi was serving in the Imperial Japanese Army and was on board the Hitachi Maru, a Japanese passenger ship converted into a military transport ship, when it was attacked and sunk by a Russian cruiser named the Gromoboi. Despite falling into freezing waters, Shuichi was able to survive and not instantly pass out due to the cold or die of hypothermia. He survived temperatures that dipped below what would normally render a person unconscious, and floated out on the sea for two whole days, managing to avoid shark attacks until he was rescued by a Russian naval ship and taken prisoner. After the war, he was repatriated to Japan and continued serving as both a soldier and a demon slayer.

These two stories are just some of the many incredible tales the Demon Slayer Corps has to offer. Stay tuned for more!