Soon the scene shifted back to Ivan.
Boom!!
The Nichirin sword, wrapped in flames and roaring waves, tore through the air with a terrifying force, kicking up gravel and weeds along the roadside.
The blade vanished from sight completely.
Murata stood frozen like an idiot, staring at the endless trench carved into the ground. He was too shocked to make a sound.
"Caw! Caw caw! Your strength has my approval, man!"
The moment Karasu finished speaking, a deafening explosion snapped Murata out of his daze.
In an instant, the long blade trailing red-and-blue flames pierced straight through the moving black swamp.
The Swamp Demon hiding inside didn't even have time to react before the sudden blade sliced clean through its neck.
"How… is this possible?" The demon's hideous main body reached up to touch its own neck. Then its perspective shifted. It saw its own headless corpse standing there, gray hands groping around where its head used to be.
What was it looking for? Its head?
Oh. Right. Its head just got chopped off by a sword.
The swamp on the ground slowly faded away. Under the moonlight, the headless demon gradually turned to ash.
"I refuse to accept this! I got away… so why?! Why the fuck could you find me?!"
The demon's remaining grotesque head let out a furious, unwilling roar. Its blood-red eyes locked onto the two humans and one demon walking toward it.
"Enough with the questions. Caw. If you're gonna die, hurry the fuck up and die already!"
Karasu dove down and kicked the demon's head flying with one claw.
The head rolled right in front of the unconscious girl.
"Waaah… Just thinking that I'll never get to eat such delicious flesh again makes me so sad… so fucking sad…" Tears welled up in the demon's eyes. It cried while stretching out its crimson, vein-covered tongue, trying to lick the girl's face. A disgusting, stinking liquid dripped from its mouth.
Sizzle! The weeds the liquid touched immediately smoked and withered.
"Karasu, stop messing around."
Murata reacted fast and kicked the demon's head away mid-air.
In midair, the demon's eyes were still full of bitter unwillingness. Before it could even hit the ground, a gust of night wind blew through and reduced it to ash that scattered in the breeze.
But right then, Mukago, standing beside Ivan, suddenly showed a look of pure panic.
Muzan… that lord wants to see me?
"What the hell are you scared of?" Ivan, who had already pushed the fusion progress to 99%, now had his perception at its absolute peak. Even the sound of Mukago's heart hammering in her chest couldn't escape his ears.
"N-nothing." Mukago lowered her head on instinct, avoiding Ivan's gaze.
It's over. If that lord finds out I betrayed him, I'm dead. What do I do? What the fuck do I do?
The thought that her life was about to end made Mukago burst into loud, messy tears.
"Lead the way. Asakusa, Tokyo."
Ivan pulled the long blade out of the ground and slid it back into his belt.
"Caw! Got it, boss."
Karasu immediately started flapping its wings to guide them.
"I'll help you break free from Muzan's control. In exchange, you help me find him. Sound fair?" Ivan said calmly.
Mukago didn't dare open her mouth. The curse inside her would explode the second it sensed she was about to leak any information about Muzan.
Ivan looked at the crystal-clear tears on her face and her pathetic, miserable expression.
"Since you're not saying anything, I'll take that as a yes."
The next second, two extra arms burst out from his back and grabbed both Murata and Mukago. Ivan's figure vanished from the spot.
At his current speed, Ivan could cross the entire length of Japan in under an hour going south to north. East to west would be even faster. After all, several times the speed of sound wasn't a joke. Even Mach 1 could cover over a thousand kilometers in an hour.
And Ivan was already well beyond Mach 3.
This still wasn't his limit.
Boom boom boom!! As time passed, the heart engine in Ivan's chest was pushed to its absolute limit. The marks on his body shifted from blue to a blazing crimson.
"You're flying too slow. From now on, you just point me in the right direction."
A invisible tentacle shot out from Ivan's shoulder and easily wrapped around the crow's body, pulling it onto his shoulder.
"Caw! Left turn… straight ahead."
Watching Ivan's speed keep increasing, Murata's face was getting deformed by the wind. "M… my lord… can you… slow down… a bit?"
Murata used every bit of strength he had to shout.
Seeing this, a thin dark-red membrane instantly wrapped around Murata, Mukago, and Karasu.
At the same time, Ivan's body started making sounds like cracking porcelain. Blazing crimson light filled every fissure. If Murata hadn't been protected by the blood-colored membrane, the resonance from Ivan's heart would've given him a splitting headache. In the worst case, it could've made Murata's own heart start resonating with it.
And if Murata's heart got caught up in Ivan's heart engine…
That meant he wasn't far from death.
Forget everything else. The blood pumping at such insane speed was enough to make his blood vessels explode.
On top of the heart resonance, Ivan's body temperature had skyrocketed. Every breath pushed it up several degrees. It wasn't an exaggeration to say he could probably cook an egg in his bare hands. That was way beyond the thirty-nine degrees a Hashira reached when they opened their marks. They weren't even in the same league.
At this point, the wind wasn't passing him anymore.
The wind was chasing after his back.
"Holy shit, what terrifying speed. And that stamina definitely isn't something a normal person could have." Murata swallowed hard, genuinely unsure now whether Ivan was human or a demon. Even a demon shouldn't be able to move this fast.
"My lord, there's a raging river up ahead. Should we take a detour?"
To be honest, even a crow's eyesight couldn't keep up with Ivan's speed.
If Ivan hadn't occasionally slowed down, Karasu wouldn't have had a clue where they were.
Karasu looked dead serious right now, doing its absolute best to act as a living map. If you looked closely, you could see a hint of fear in its eyes, and the fine feathers on its forehead were already soaked with cold sweat.
"No need." Ivan said coldly.
He swung both arms. Two massive telekinetic waves launched him straight over the river in one leap.
Scared the shit out of me. Where the hell did Mr. Urokodaki find this monster? Not only is he ridiculously strong, he's not even afraid of sunlight. He's straight-up inhuman. Karasu lifted its right wing and carefully wiped the cold sweat from its forehead.
"Tokyo Prefecture, Asakusa District, is right ahead. According to government rules, Demon Slayers have to remove their swords from their waists…"
Karasu hadn't even finished speaking before Ivan shot straight inside.
The people walking along the roadside only caught a glimpse of red light brushing past them. By the time they tried to focus and figure out what it was, Ivan's figure had already vanished from their sight.
A few breaths later,
Ivan suddenly spun around and leapt with terrifying force into a nearby estate.
The estate looked completely ordinary, like no one had lived there in ages. But the next second, the steam pouring from Ivan's mouth turned into a violent gust of wind. With him at the center, an extremely hot current blasted outward in all directions. Boom!!! The force was terrifying, like it wanted to destroy everything around it.
Suddenly, a gentle voice rang out.
"Yushiro, remove the illusion around us and let them in."
With several talismans marked with eye patterns falling to the ground, the surrounding environment changed completely. The overgrown, abandoned estate became a clean, tidy courtyard. All kinds of medicinal herbs grew along both sides.
"Waaah!" ×3.
The moment Murata and the others were set down, they all bent over and threw up at the same time. Even Karasu did the same.
Honestly, Ivan's current appearance looked exactly like a high-ranking demon.
Cracks covered his entire body, filled with ferocious, terrifying marks that glowed like molten lava. The extra arms on his back had extremely defined muscle lines, like they were woven from steel cables, holding unimaginable power.
Hah! Every breath Ivan took sent extremely hot steam spreading outward.
Murata barely brushed against it by accident and a blister immediately formed on the back of his hand at visible speed.
"So hot!" Murata quickly pulled away from the steam and kept blowing cold air on his hand.
"Are you a demon?" Yushiro, standing in front of the wooden door, frowned.
"But there's no demon scent on you. Very strange. Still, there's no doubt you're a dangerous person."
From Yushiro's expression, he clearly wasn't thrilled about Ivan getting close to Tamayo.
"Please let the guests inside."
"Come in." At Tamayo's instruction, Yushiro reluctantly pushed open the wooden door behind him.
Whew… As Ivan exhaled the air from his lungs, the temperature on his body surface began dropping rapidly.
He pulled the extra arms back inside his body.
Then he stepped toward the wooden door.
"Lower Rank Four!" Only now did Yushiro notice the characters in Mukago's eyes.
"Don't worry. They don't mean any harm." Tamayo's gentle voice came from inside the house again.
"Ivan."
"Call me, Tamayo."
When Ivan stepped into the wooden house, he saw Tamayo kneeling on the tatami in a deep purple kimono, her face gentle and beautiful.
"Please sit." Her eyes seemed to hold a faint purple mist, giving her an especially mysterious air.
"No need."
The room's furnishings were very modern. Medical instruments like scalpels, tweezers, and glass jars sat on the counters around the room.
For a moment, Ivan felt like he had returned to the modern world.
____
[]~(￣▽￣)~*
Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69