Its jaw was shattered, its brain rattled.
Its vision flipped, its balance gone, its very footing on the earth lost.
It was wild. It was a beast. And so, it was a Demon.
Because it didn’t rely on its mind the way humans did, its body could still move.
Guided by instinct, it lunged, grabbing with feral brutality… driven by the urge to sink its sharp claws into its enemy.
Got you now!—or so it thought, before an unprecedented shock tore through its body.
Ikaku Akamuro’s tree-trunk of a leg had shot through the gap between the Demon’s thighs, slamming violently upward into its groin.
Its precious testicles were crushed, its dreams of offspring obliterated.
“Graa—aaa—aaaugh!?”
Ikaku Akamuro’s groin kick was devastating.
The Demon froze. The whites of its eyes showing, it curled its body and pitched directly into Ikaku’s second upward slash.
This time, the searing blow caught its torso in a rising diagonal cut.
A line of fire traced the gash. A horrifyingly malevolent explosion followed, erupting from the wound.
The cursed flames burned the Demon from the inside out. The conflagration was so fierce that Ikaku couldn’t get away in time and was caught in the blast.
The Blade of Homura leaves a curse in its wake. Those it cuts have no means of resisting their fate of certain death.
To swing the unswingable blade meant unleashing a fatal fire that settled everything in a single strike.
“...Wait, he was caught in the explosion?! Ikaku!!”
Sumire Akashi screamed instinctively. Even from several meters away, the heat was so intense she had to turn her face away.
There’s no way he survived.
Her instincts told her with absolute certainty that no human body could withstand that kind of firepower.
The flames cleared.
Ikaku Akamuro still stood, locked in the same poised stance he’d held at the end of the strike. Composed. Motionless.
After a beat, he relaxed his stance. At his feet lay the Demon, charred black by the explosion.
He casually patted out the flames that had caught on his coat, then cracked his neck as if to say, Another job done.
His gaze fell on Sumire.
She blinked, looking up at the towering man as he approached her.
“That was a close one, Miss Akashi.” He offered her his thick, hard, and massive hand.
“Th-thank you…” Sumire whispered, nervously taking his hand to pull herself to her feet.
So that kind of explosion is nothing to him? Oh god, I screamed so loud. How embarrassing… And hold on, he was just punching and kicking the Demon?
This… this is his method of Exorcism? This is so beyond anything I could have imagined…
This was not the kind of battle they taught in the textbooks. It deviated too far from all established theories.
This guy really is weird.
The more Sumire Akashi learned about the man named Ikaku Akamuro, the more distant and otherworldly he seemed.
Ikaku glanced down at the now-cool Blade of Homura in his hand.
Already burned out, huh. As I thought, this thing has no restraint. It reduces anything it cuts to ash, but you can only swing it once or twice.
Turns out that smoke-sword was actually pretty fuel-efficient.
Meanwhile, as the Demon lay on the ground, a fluffy cat was batting about the hatchet still clutched in its hand.
Each swat was a heavy, murderous cat-punch.
“Meow, mee-oow!” (Excuse me, but didn’t you say something about ‘lover’ or whatever earlier? It appears I need to make you understand your place. Hmph! Hmph!)
Aah! It hurts, it hurts! I’m being attacked by a wild animal! Ikaku, help me!
The cat’s righteous punishment continued for quite some time.