"There she is."
Inosuke pointed toward the woman in white, then bolted forward first.
"Murata, I'm leaving this to you."
Before Murata could answer, Tanjiro had already run off after him.
Left alone, Murata gripped his Nichirin blade with both hands, trembling as he looked over the fallen team members, their fates still unknown.
Tanjiro quickly caught up with Inosuke, and sure enough, the closer they got to that spot, the stronger the stench became.
The woman in white seemed to sense them coming. Her face twisted into panic as she cried out, "Don't come near me! Don't come near me! Die! Die!" She yanked hard on the spider silk in both hands.
Suddenly, a massive, misshapen body blocked their path.
It stood twice the height of either of them, headless, its skin an unsettling shade of purple. Where hands should have been, a pair of enormous curved blades jutted out instead.
Clearly, this was another puppet under the woman's control, but unlike the corpses of the Corps members, this one was a demon itself, and far more dangerous.
Having grown up in the mountains, Inosuke had incredible jumping ability. He leapt into the air, raised his twin blades, and slashed hard at the puppet's neck.
The puppet blocked the strike with one arm and hurled him back with brute force.
Inosuke skidded to a stop beside Tanjiro, only now registering that the thing in front of them had no head at all, which threw him for a loop.
"Ah, did you see that? This thing doesn't even have a head! How am I supposed to behead something with no head?" The more he thought about it, the more frantic he became. "Does that mean it can't be killed? What do we do? What do we do?!"
"Don't rush in, Inosuke."
Using his keen sense of smell, Tanjiro had already found the puppet's weak point. Gripping his blade, he said, "Cut it from the base of the neck all the way down to the waist. It's a long stroke, but if we time it together, we can pull it off"
"Hmph, who says I need your help? I can take this thing down myself." Inosuke cut him off and charged forward again, blade first.
Inosuke fought with both swords, and so did the puppet, but the gap in speed and power was too wide. In a single exchange, he'd already picked up four or five wounds.
Refusing to back down, Inosuke kept attacking, but each strike was turned aside by the puppet's paired blades.
After struggling without making any headway, he let out a string of frustrated, wordless growls.
Thrown back once more, he didn't notice several white spiders slipping out of the bushes behind him. Spider silk wound tightly around his body, pinning him in place just as the puppet raised a bladed arm and thrust it straight at him.
Watching the blade close in, Inosuke froze in genuine panic. A hit like that through the heart would be fatal. He couldn't help but shout, "Oh no, I'm gonna die!"
At the last possible second, Tanjiro appeared in front of him, blocked the strike with his own blade, and used the puppet's momentary retreat to cut through the silk, freeing Inosuke.
Watching Tanjiro save him, Inosuke felt an unexpected warmth well up in his chest, a feeling that both drew him in and made him bristle at the same time. He appreciated the help, but he wasn't about to say so out loud.
"Hmph. I could've gotten free on my own anyway."
Tanjiro knew Inosuke well enough by now not to bother arguing.
"If the two of us attack together, we can definitely take it down."
"Fine. I'll give you this one chance." This time, Inosuke didn't push back.
Tanjiro charged in first, driving the puppet back with a horizontal slash. Then he dropped to one knee and called out, "Inosuke, jump off the box!"
Inosuke had no idea what Tanjiro was planning, but he followed the instruction anyway, leaping off the box on Tanjiro's back and straight into the puppet's crossed blades.
Using the opening, he sliced through both of the puppet's arms and used the box's momentum to launch himself higher into the air.
To bring the puppet down to a more manageable height for Inosuke, Tanjiro still crouched below, turned and aimed a strike at its legs.
"Water Breathing, Fourth Form: Striking Tide."
The sound of rushing water rippled from his blade as a clean arc sliced through the puppet's legs.
The creature dropped by half its height with a heavy thud just as Inosuke came down from above. Everything lined up exactly as planned, down to the last inch.
Inosuke was startled, though a flicker of envy crept in alongside it.
"Just slice it diagonally, like that."
"Hmph. Guess you've got some skill. I'll follow your lead for now."
Inosuke gripped his Nichirin blades tightly, holding both side by side. Twisting from the waist, he swung with everything he had, slashing the puppet from neck to hip in one clean stroke.
Just as Tanjiro had predicted, the wound began to smolder, and the puppet slowly crumbled into ash.
"We won! We beat it! Inosuke, we actually won!"
"Hah, with me around, this was nothing."
Deep in the woods, the woman in white stared at the slack silk now hanging useless in her hands. Her puppet had failed, and for the first time, real horror crept into her expression.
"How could I have failed? How could I have failed? Beaten by mere humans?"
With the giant puppet destroyed, all that was left was the person controlling it from the shadows.
Drawing on his earlier sense of the surroundings, Inosuke judged that she was no more than a dozen meters away. Still stinging from having taken Tanjiro's orders, he suddenly had an idea to turn the tables.
"Hey, that really bugged me back there. My turn to boss you around for once."
Inosuke dropped his swords, dashed over to Tanjiro, and threw his arms around him in a tight hug.
Tanjiro froze, baffled. Inosuke had been fine just seconds ago; why was he suddenly hugging him like this? Was this some kind of victory celebration?
"Inosuke, what are you doing?"
"I'm not satisfied yet. I want in on the fun too." Before Tanjiro could react, Inosuke's grip tightened, and he hurled him straight up into the air.
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