On the other side of the river, Spider Demon Father forcefully pulled several icicles out of his body, casually tossed them aside, and let out a deafening roar at Cold Cry, as if demanding to know why he was interfering.
"Aren't you looking for Rui? What does he have to do with you?"
Cold Cry noticed that Spider Demon Father had several eyes scattered across his head, but none of them bore the crescent-shaped marking and number Tamayo had described. Besides, members of the Twelve Kizuki almost always took human form; it seemed impossible that this monster, neither fully human nor spider, could be one of them.
Hearing that the intruder was asking about Rui, Inosuke remembered Tanjiro shouting, right before he was sent flying, that Rui was one of the Twelve Kizuki. He coughed twice and managed, "Tanjiro... Tanjiro said he's one of the Twelve Kizuki."
Cold Cry had no idea whom the Boar Head meant by "Tanjiro," but he was certain the giant standing in front of him couldn't possibly be Rui.
"You are not allowed to touch my family."
The girl in white had called herself the elder sister. So who was this giant in front of her uncle? A brother? Or a father?
It seemed the family Rui had built for himself lived here, on Spider Mountain.
Spider Demon Father waded across the river and charged at Cold Cry.
Cold Cry glanced over at Inosuke, slumped beneath the tree roots, wearing a boar's head mask, a leather skirt, and nothing else on top. If it weren't for the Demon Slayer Corps uniform trousers, Cold Cry might have mistaken him for a demon himself.
*No wonder they call it the Demon Slayer Corps,* he thought. *It's one thing for the demons to look strange. I didn't expect the Corps members to be just as strange.*
To keep Spider Demon Father from taking the chance to finish off Inosuke, Cold Cry coated the soles of his feet in cold air. Using the ice that formed wherever he touched the ground, he boosted his speed and drew Father away from the shore and into the river.
The river was a natural weapon in Cold Cry's hands.
He skated across the water's surface on a thin sheet of ice, formed instantly beneath his feet by the cold radiating from his body.
On the bank, Inosuke stared, stunned that he'd never seen a Breathing Style like this before.
"Tell me where it hurts," Cold Cry pressed.
"Ahh, I want you dead. I want you dead!"
Father lunged at Cold Cry, throwing punch after punch.
Cold Cry didn't retreat to create distance; he met the attack head-on. Using his sense of temperature, he could read exactly where each blow was coming from, then used the ice beneath his feet to dart aside at the last instant.
Water sprayed in every direction as Cold Cry's figure cut through it, swift and almost weightless.
He drew his Nichirin blade, slid between Father's legs, and appeared behind him, swinging for his back.
*Clang.* The blade struck as if it had hit solid rock hard enough to numb Cold Cry's hand and left only a shallow white gash a few inches deep across Father's back.
Father roared and spun around, throwing a heavy punch at Cold Cry.
Cold Cry dodged with two quick leaps, putting space between them. In that short exchange, he'd already gotten a read on his opponent.
*His rock-hard muscles make him a fortress on defense, and that same body is his weapon on offense.*
*With the strength I can put behind my wrist right now, I can't take his head in one strike. If I try to force it, I'll end up as I did back under the tree roots, snapping the blade.*
*Still, the cut isn't useless. Even shallow, it won't heal instantly the way an ordinary wound would.*
*Father's enormous body is a burden on his legs; he moves entirely with his lower body, and attacks entirely with his upper body.*
After a moment's thought, Cold Cry settled on another approach: if he couldn't take the head in one blow, he'd cut it again and again, using the cold to seize up Father's neck and blunt the force behind his attacks.
Cold Cry drew a deep breath. Cold air spilled out around him in a pale mist, and the ice beneath his feet began spreading outward.
"Ice Breathing, Fusion Technique: Phantom Snowfall."
Cold Cry's figure flickered and vanished, like a moving blizzard swallowing the charging Father whole.
Only a white mist hung over the river's surface. No one could see what was happening inside it, but the roars and crashes made it clear something was.
The mist kept spreading, and everywhere it passed, a layer of ice several inches thick formed over the water.
Another figure burst from the trees Nezuko this time. Wait, no: it was Noe. Seeing Inosuke slumped beneath the roots, she instinctively reached for her blade, then recognized the Corps uniform and stopped herself.
Inosuke spotted her too.
Having already seen Cold Cry's Breathing Style in action on Mount Fujikasane and in Qingshui Town, Noe recognized the white mist immediately as his doing.
*She doesn't know what he's fighting in there. Charging in now would be reckless.*
A moment later, a snow-white figure burst up out of the mist, leapt several meters into the air, turned its back to the moon, and raised a blade overhead in both hands.
Below, the mist gathered rather than dispersed, as if pulled by some unseen force, streaming from every direction toward the Nichirin blade.
Then it cleared all at once, revealing the river again. Father knelt in the water, sheathed in ice crystals, frozen fast in place.
"Ice Breathing, Fourth Form: Icefall."
Cold surged from the blade once more, and shards of ice rained down from the air. Cold Cry brought the blade down like a pale ribbon falling from the sky, striking Father's nape with tremendous force.
A massive roar echoed out, shattering the surrounding ice, which the chill pouring from the blade immediately froze solid again.
Father let out a shriek and tried to struggle, but the force behind Cold Cry's blade was too great, and the cold continued to eat away at him until he lost the strength to resist entirely.
The blade had sunk deep into Father's nape but still hadn't severed it. The chill kept spreading downward, and within moments Father was frozen kneeling in the riverbed, as still as an ice sculpture.
Cold Cry pulled the blade free, set it against Father's neck, and began hacking at it again and again like a butcher breaking down a frozen carcass.
"Cold Cry, I'm here to help."
Noe crossed the ice to reach him. She still felt guilty over what had happened between them and was looking for a way to mend things.
Cold Cry didn't even look at her.
Assuming he was still angry, she said nothing more, drew her own blade, and joined in. Little by little, Father's neck gave way, nearly severed through.
By then, Inosuke had come back to his senses and pulled himself upright against the tree trunk.
Two brutal hits had pushed his body to its limit, especially the last one, when Father's fist had caught him square in the chest and cracked several ribs.
Watching the two of them out on the river, Inosuke felt a stab of envy.
*He'd* had the same idea: if you can't take the head in one cut, cut it again and again in the same spot. He'd managed it, technically, but it only cost Father one arm, nowhere near as clean as what Cold Cry had just pulled off.
The thought only made the jealousy worse.
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