Chapter 157: Pushing the Limits
Akira left Zenitsu in the care of Tanjirou and the Tokito twins, allowing the younger generation to get acquainted while he went to seek out Gyomei.
"Hello! My name is Kamado Tanjirou. You can just call me Tanjirou," the burgundy-haired boy greeted with a bright, disarming smile. "And these two are Tokito Yuichiro and Tokito Muichiro."
With Akira gone, it was naturally the endlessly warm and sociable Tanjirou who broke the ice. Relying on his preternatural sense of smell—which could easily distinguish malice from goodwill—he quickly determined that the shivering blonde boy harbored absolutely no ill intent. Zenitsu simply reeked of a deep, confusing terror that Tanjirou didn't quite understand. Unfazed, he struck up a conversation without a second thought.
"M-My name is Agatsuma Zenitsu," the boy stammered, flinching slightly. "You can just call me Zenitsu..."
While the four youths awkwardly handled their introductions outside, Akira was busy exchanging pointers on Breathing Styles with the Stone Hashira, Himejima Gyomei.
In simpler terms, it was a spar.
Yet, ever since Gyomei had joined the Demon Slayer Corps, this marked the very first time anyone had actively sought him out for a one-on-one duel. After all, a normal person would instantly banish any thought of a friendly match the moment they laid eyes on his weapon—a terrifying spiked flail with a diameter of nearly a meter, connected to a heavy hand-axe by a thick iron chain.
Akira wasn't crazy enough to fight the gentle giant head-on. If that massive iron sphere hit him solidly even once, he was pretty sure his life would be instantly forfeit. He merely wanted to test exactly how much of his raw speed he could use against a master who had fully grasped the Transparent World.
Because of the sheer lethal nature of Gyomei's arsenal, this was also the first time Akira had drawn his own Nichirin blade during a training bout.
"Here I come," Akira warned, his voice dropping to a low, focused hum. He didn't waste another breath before launching his assault.
"Thunder Breathing, Seventh Form: Dragon's Glide."
Incandescent golden lightning erupted from his blade, twisting and coalescing into the shape of a serpentine dragon. With a violent crack of thunder, the electric beast surged forward, its massive jaws snapping shut as it coiled tightly around Gyomei's towering figure. The blinding light expanded, transforming into an inverted dome of electricity that threatened to swallow the Stone Hashira whole.
"Stone Breathing, Third Form: Stone Skin."
Just as the roaring lightning closed in, Gyomei finally moved. He swung his massive flail with terrifying fluidity. The deafening clatter of heavy iron chain links and the sharp, whistling shriek of the spiked hammer head filled the air. In a fraction of a second, the whirling iron forged an impenetrable, rock-solid defensive barrier around his body.
Akira ducked under a stray swing of the flail, his blade sparking as he tried to find a gap in the whirling chains. After a rapid succession of harsh, metallic clangs that sent vibrations shooting up his forearms, he had no choice but to leap backward, landing lightly on the dirt.
Against Gyomei's mastery of the Transparent World, a standard Dragon's Glide wasn't even enough to force the man to use his axe.
Still, this fell perfectly within Akira's expectations. Gyomei's base physical stats were simply absurd. Even if the giant's attack speed was technically a fraction slower than Akira's lightning-fast strikes, the precognitive boost granted by the Transparent World completely negated that subtle gap. It allowed Gyomei to deflect Akira's relentless onslaught with energy to spare.
"I'm going all out now," Akira called out, adjusting his grip on his hilt. "Be careful."
Determined to push his own boundaries, Akira had no intention of stopping at basic forms. Before his warning even finished echoing across the training ground, his entire aura shifted drastically.
His inhalations sounded like rolling thunder, and his heartbeat accelerated into a frantic, deafening war drum. Through the lens of the Transparent World, Gyomei could 'see' the explosive surge of energy coursing through Akira's muscles and blood vessels. It all heralded one obvious truth: the Sound Hashira was adopting a desperate, life-risking combat style.
By forcibly over-stimulating his heart rate, Akira temporarily shattered his physical limiters. Only in this hyper-accelerated state could he truly claim to be going all out.
"Thunder Breathing, Ninth Form: Divine Punishment, Five-Fold."
In the span of a single thought, Akira vanished.
He moved so fast that even the brilliant arcs of lightning trailing his blade seemed to blink out of existence, leaving behind nothing but the sharp scent of ozone.
Gyomei could 'see' the trajectory of the incoming assault, but his massive body struggled to react in time. It wasn't until Akira's blade was mere inches from his shoulder that the Stone Hashira managed to whip his iron chain up to deflect the blow.
But the second strike arrived a microsecond later. Then the third. The fourth. The sheer velocity of the chained attacks made it increasingly difficult for Gyomei to keep his defense intact.
Finally, the devastating fifth strike descended. Forced onto the back foot, Gyomei had to bring up the heavy axe in his left hand to barely parry the blinding slash. The sheer kinetic force of the impact sent a shockwave through the courtyard, the violent airflow slicing cleanly through a single strand of Gyomei's hair.
A heartbeat later, Akira's figure materialized exactly where he had initially launched the technique, his back now facing the towering giant.
Etched deep into the earth, perfectly centered around Gyomei's stance, a massive, smoldering pentagram pattern smoked quietly in the aftermath of their clash.
Clang.
Akira's grip failed. His Nichirin blade slipped from his fingers and hit the dirt, closely followed by Akira himself, who collapsed flat onto his back, his chest heaving violently.
Forcing his body past its natural breaking point to execute the five-strike combo of Divine Punishment was the absolute maximum he could handle today. It was the kind of ultimate move that left him completely drained the second it concluded. By relying on that extreme burst of speed, even though Gyomei could track the movements, the Stone Hashira couldn't casually brush them aside like before.
Unfortunately, even that monumental effort had only forced Gyomei to use his axe.
"Remarkable," Gyomei rumbled, his deep voice filled with genuine awe as he stepped forward to check on the younger man's condition.
Only he, possessing the sight of the Transparent World, truly understood the terrifying lethality of the offensive Akira had just unleashed. It was no exaggeration to say that, had Gyomei not mastered the Transparent World, that single technique would have heavily injured him. And given the clean, ruthlessly efficient decapitation style inherent to Thunder Breathing, the line between 'heavily injured'and'dead' was razor-thin. Gyomei wasn't a demon; he couldn't regenerate, and his neck wasn't his only vital point. A wide hand-axe could only cover so much of his massive, two-meter frame.
"Compared to you, I'm still miles away," Akira replied, his voice calm despite his ragged breathing.
Because his baseline physical conditioning had vastly improved since his life-or-death struggle against Gyokko, Akira didn't black out from the intense cardiovascular strain. His body hadn't suffered any severe internal damage either—just a heavy bout of muscle strain that would fade after a few days of proper rest.
After thoroughly confirming that Akira wasn't in any critical danger, Gyomei respectfully summoned his Kasugai Crow, instructing it to deliver a medical request to the Butterfly Mansion.
Lying in the dirt, staring up at the darkening sky, Akira mentally calculated his odds. He wondered if this newly refined technique would give him a fighting chance against Akaza.
Until he could unlock the Transparent World for himself, fighting against Upper Moon Three's Destructive Death: Compass Needle was functionally identical to fighting someone with the Transparent World. While the Compass Needle didn't literally allow Akaza to see through his opponent's muscles and blood flow, it perfectly sensed fighting spirit, predicting incoming attacks with flawless accuracy to counter them instantly.
, as an Upper Rank demon, Akaza's raw physical specs were likely even higher than Gyomei's current human limits. Blocking Akira's five-fold strike wouldn't be an impossible task for the martial arts demon. At the very least, relying purely on the burst speed of those five strikes wouldn't be enough to overwhelm Akaza and force a fatal flaw.
Reaching that grim conclusion, Akira could only let out a soft, tired sigh.
"You really have some nerve, you know? Using a desperate, life-threatening technique during a simple sparring match." A familiar, melodious voice drifted over him, dripping with sweet but dangerous sarcasm. "Honestly, as the Sound Hashira, you might as well petition to change your title to the Life Hashira. Seeing as you insist on gambling with your life every few days..."
Kochou Shinobu knelt beside him, her delicate hands moving with practiced efficiency as she wrapped clean bandages around his strained forearms, her sharp tongue scolding him the entire time.
Heaven only knew the sheer panic that had gripped her heart when the Kasugai Crow arrived. She had just finished her grueling daily rounds at the estate and was settling in for a quiet evening of pharmacological research when the news of his injury dropped.
After all, based on their harrowing past experiences, Akira wasn't the type to get bruised from clumsy mistakes. He rarely sustained minor injuries. When he got hurt, it was almost always a catastrophic, bed-ridden affair that left him entirely dependent on her care.
Worse yet, the only enemies currently capable of inflicting that kind of damage on him were the Upper Rank Moons.
These were legendary nightmares that most Demon Slayers would never encounter in a dozen lifetimes. Had her foolish, overly-protective man somehow stumbled into another one?
She had rushed over immediately, her mind racing with worst-case scenarios. Upon arriving and learning the actual, ridiculous context of his collapse, Shinobu had breathed a massive sigh of relief. But the moment that heavy dread faded, a fiery, exasperated anger had quickly taken its place, fueling the tight, punishing tug she gave the final knot on his bandages.
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