Moonlight

Two

Sara headed up the mountain with her hand on her katana. She hid the kitsune mask Urokodaki had made for her in her haori, in case it would attract unwanted attention from demons. Besides, she didn't want it to break so that she could keep it with her after she passed Final Selection.

She had a rough plan in mind; she would head west where the Sun set during the day, and fight the demons on the east side of the mountain at night, where the Sun would rise. This way, she could make the most of the daylight.

Yes, it would involve a lot of travelling back and forth the mountain, but after restless training on Mount Sagiri, Sara could handle it.

She had trained day and night under Master Urokodaki's watchful gaze, taking breaks only to eat before continuing on with her training. When she realised that the Water Breathing technique she'd learnt would not work for her, she instead had to figure out the Ice Breathing technique on her own with merely a few notes from the previous Breath of Ice user to guide her.

꧁☯︎︎꧂

The first few days on Mount Fujikasane were relatively easy. Since none of the demons here had eaten more than three or four people, Sara decapitated them all with ease.

It made it easier that whenever two demons spotted her at the same time, they often fought about who would get to eat her first, giving Sara a chance to decapitate them while they were distracted.

However, on the last day of Final Selection, Sara grew uneasy. She detected a presence that made her hand shake while gripping her katana and sent a shiver down her spine.

It wasn't like her to be afraid of demons. For a swordsman of her age, she was exceedingly talented, but that didn't excuse the fact that she was extremely young.

She had not even turned thirteen yet, and she made up for it by training harder, but she still had a lot of height to grow. She had trained her muscles to be strong enough to decapitate even high level demons, which was proven the moment she'd managed to slice that boulder on Mount Sagiri.

Nonetheless, her body was small; and even endless training could not entirely make up for her little size.

So when she detected the presence of a demon which was probably at least thirty times the size and weight of herself, she couldn't help but feel slightly intimidated.

The demon must have been quite far away from her, as it was only a faint presence, but she could easily tell that the strength of this demon was much beyond that of every other demon she had encountered to this point.

Sara took a moment to consider whether it would be better to confront the demon, or to head east in the direction of the sunrise as she had originally planned.

Perhaps it would be safer to head east. This demon is emitting a powerful aura, I can feel it even despite being far away. If I try to fight it, there's no promise that I'll make it out alive.

The other demons on this mountain were all weak. If Sara were to avoid the demon, the chance of her surviving Final Selection would be much higher.

On the other hand, Sara could tell that this demon had eaten dozens of people by the powerful presence of it alone. If she were to leave it to be, it was sure to eat many more in the future.

While she stood there pondering what she would do next, she accidentally stepped on something. Bending down to pick it up, she realised it was a yellow hexagon hilt from a katana. Maybe someone lost it? Or maybe it belonged to a previous swordsman.

Distracted, Sara had barely any time to react when a large green hand sped toward her from the right at a terrifying speed.

Only thanks to her sharp and well-trained intuition was she was able to leap to the side just in time to avoid getting grabbed by the demon's hand. Her eyes widened and her pupils shook slightly.