The Rise Of The Demon King Tanjiro

Chapter 1: Rise Of Demon King Tanjiro

This is it the end of the final battle as the remaining demon slayers finally managed to pull the bleeding and crying Nezuko away from the frozen body of Tanjiro. Just a second before, he was fighting like a ferocious beast, or, for a lack of a better term, demon. His empty eyes showed nothing but the cruelest malice. He wanted them dead. He needed them dead, for they were his worst enemies. His most dear comrades. His most dear friends. His most dear brothers and his dearest little sister, which he risked his life to get back hers.

And then he was frozen as if he just shut down. His whips went back into his back. He went limp. He stopped attacking. Maybe it was Kanao's injection. Giyuu certainly hoped it was Kanao's injection. Without hesitation, Giyuu rushed forward and pulled Nezuko away, heart pounding since he realized that in doing so, he was unable to unleash his blade if Tanjiro tried to attack again. Kanao used the last of her energy to crawl away and finally fell into the beautiful world of darkness after being grabbed by a few Kakushi.

Silence filled the square. It wasn't total silence but the relative difference from just seconds before was jarring to Giyuu. The screaming, the screeching, the roars, and the cracks, were all gone in mere miliseconds. The Kakushi slowly edged away from the battlefield, dragging away some of the more injured Slayers, careful not to add any more wounds to them. Most of them were not going to be alive any longer. At the same time, the able-bodied Slayers came rushing from all corners of the town. There weren't many and were all hesitant to fight, for they had all heard of the exploits that made up the sort-of-legend Demon Slayer Tanjiro.

The silence continued. Giyuu's hope began to grow. He breathed a faint sigh of relief through his nose. "Tanjiro, he's fighting back."

Another Slayer, a Hinoto, next to Giyuu swallowed and took a step closer to the Pillar. Giyuu frowned internally at his presence. He felt a sudden great sadness press onto his shoulders at the realization that this Hinoto might be one of the last moderately ranking Slayers around. The deaths that day, each one he views as one of his failures, were creeping on him now like a dark shadow. The Hinoto swallowed and asked with a shaking breath, "Wh- what do we do now? D- do we kill him?"

"No..." Giyuu replied. "No, we will watch for now." His voice shook less with each sentence. "We wait. Tanjiro's fighting. He's resisting Muzan," A pause. "Knowing Tanjiro, he'll win. That's why he's not attacking. That's why he didn't kill and eat Nezuko. Tanjiro is still there. We will wait," he declared.

Besides... Even if I said to kill him, what would you be able to do? What would even I be able to do?... I can't lose another, Giyuu thought.

The Hinoto swallowed again and stepped back. But another Slayer, this time a Kanoto, spoke up. "What do we do if he doesn't win?"

Giyuu's own fears were echoed in that question. He glared at the Slayer for daring to even suggest such a thing, but then looked down, blade dipping. There was a chance that would happen. He can't deny that possibility. Giyuu did not reply for a short while. "He has to. Because... We'll die if he doesn't."

With grim and absolutely horrified faces, the Corps stood on guard.

"Don't you get it?" It was a pleading voice. A tired voice. A desperate voice. A voice that Tanjiro never would have expected to hear from what he viewed as the ultimate power and the ultimate evil. And yet he had come to realize that this was what he expected after all he had learned of the king and coward. Tanjiro stared at Muzan in front of him. The great Demon King of a thousand years and three hundred thousand nights. Muzan was killed. So why wasn't he dead?

The boy felt tired, and it was hard to keep holding the hands above. The weight on his back. His arms were weak. The hands of his friends and his family. They once radiated warmth and love. But the comfort, the comfort that was slipping away every second, was that of a cold however rather than a warm blanket. It once gave him strength, to take hold of them. Now, it was asking too much of him to keep holding on. Muzan, his face and voice full of emotion, pressed against the Demon Slayer.