Demon Slayer: Rewriting Tragedies with Super Vision — Chapter 185

Chapter 185: Things Have Come to This, Let’s Eat First

Maintaining the state for merely a few minutes left a heavy, throbbing weight behind his eyes.

It wasn’t physical exhaustion that plagued him, but a severe mental strain. The Transparent World laid bare the complex, microscopic details of everything within his vicinity—the flow of blood, the twitch of muscle fibers, the subtle shifts in the air. This hyper-clarity flooded his brain with a torrential influx of sensory data, far more than his mind could process at once.

Akira rubbed his temples, a sharp wince twisting his features. ‘God, my head is splitting…’

His immediate plan was clear: wait for the impending thunderstorm to execute his next move, while simultaneously honing his mastery over the Transparent World. He needed to reach a point where slipping in and out of that heightened state was as effortless as breathing. Once he achieved that baseline, he could refine his control over its area of effect. Expanding his perception to its absolute maximum right off the bat was a surefire recipe for a debilitating migraine. Only in dire necessity would he push it that far.

And once his mastery was complete? He fully intended to track down a certain Upper Rank demon—a creature utterly devoid of human emotion—and deliver a few choice words that would leave the bastard completely baffled before taking his head.

Akira leaned back against the wooden engawa, closing his eyes until the sharp throbbing in his skull finally ebbed away to a dull ache. Once the discomfort subsided, he straightened his posture, preparing to dive back in.

There was an old saying about the first time being awkward and the second time being familiar, but Akira hadn’t felt any real clunkiness during his initial breakthrough. Naturally, his second attempt was just as smooth. He drew in a long, measured breath, letting the crisp air fill his lungs. He emptied his mind, relaxed his tense muscles, and smoothly slipped back into the Transparent World.

This time, however, he didn’t let his senses run wild. He actively seized the reins, attempting to rein in the sprawling radius of his perception. He clamped down a bit too hard, accidentally compressing the field—which had previously blanketed the entirety of the Butterfly Mansion, the medical wards, and the surrounding courtyards—into a tight, one-meter bubble around his body. The sudden sensory deprivation was jarring, but a satisfied smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. He had confirmed it: autonomous control over the perception range was entirely possible.

Beyond spatial awareness, the true prize of this state was the absolute, microscopic control it granted over his own physical power.

This precise mastery was Akira’s primary motivation for pursuing the Transparent World in the first place. More specifically, it was the key to ensuring he wouldn’t be reduced to a passive, defensive punching bag the next time he crossed paths with Akaza.

While immersed in the Transparent World, Akira could dictate the flow of his own energy down to the cellular level, restraining his battle aura to the absolute extreme. Any minuscule trace of killing intent that managed to leak out would smoothly dissipate into the natural environment. It was the ultimate countermeasure. Even Akaza’s dreaded Compass Needle—a technique that tracked an opponent’s fighting spirit—would be rendered entirely blind. Stripped of his supernatural radar, and faced with Akira’s overwhelming, explosive speed, the Upper Rank Three would no longer pose an impossible threat.

As he continued to explore the depths of his newly acquired state, Akira stumbled upon a thrilling, unexpected surprise.

He drew his Nichirin Blade, fully mobilizing the kinetic energy coiled within his muscles, and clamped his hands down on the hilt with crushing force. Heat flared beneath his palms. Starting from the tsuba, the cold steel began to glow with an intense, searing crimson that rapidly crawled up the length of the metal.

Just as his grip strength approached its absolute limit, the entire blade ignited into a brilliant, burning red. Even the pure white lightning motifs etched into the steel were swallowed by the hazy, crimson glow.

He had manifested a Bright Red Nichirin Sword using nothing but his bare hands.

It was a staggering discovery, yet, upon reflection, entirely logical. Akira’s physical constitution was already monstrously powerful; within the entire Demon Slayer Corps, only Gyomei possessed greater raw strength. Akira could shatter Giyu’s ironclad defenses through sheer, overwhelming physical suppression alone. Now, by pairing that monstrous strength with the absolute, waste-free energy control provided by the Transparent World, he could channel every ounce of his power directly into his grip. The resulting friction and pressure birthed the Bright Red Nichirin Sword.

With this trump card secured, his odds of successfully executing Doma skyrocketed.

Previously, Akira had been forced to rely on the intense friction generated by his extreme movement speed to forcibly heat the metal. That crude method not only introduced a dangerous element of sluggishness to his footwork but also inflicted severe structural damage to the blade itself. Against an opponent as lethal and calculating as Upper Rank Two, even a microsecond of delay or a slightly chipped edge could spell the difference between life and death.

Granted, if Akira and Gyomei fought side-by-side in their current states, they wouldn’t lose. But Doma was a slippery, treacherous bastard; if he managed to escape the encirclement, the fallout would be disastrous.

Buoyed by his success, Akira’s mood lifted considerably. He could physically feel his control over the Transparent World sharpening with each passing second, his mastery leveling up at an astonishing rate.

Eager to push his limits, he began a rigorous cycle of mental gymnastics. He expanded the sensory radius outward, then snapped it back tight against his skin, then threw it wide open again. Push and pull. Expand and contract. He repeated the cycle over and over.

Until, inevitably, the backlash hit.

A sudden, violent wave of vertigo crashed over him. It felt as though his brain had just been forced to perform a thousand weighted squats in the span of a minute. Starved of oxygen and completely overloaded, his vision instantly tunneled into pitch black. His body went limp, and he blacked out on the spot.

Sometime later, Shinobu stepped out into the courtyard. Having just finished her morning rounds in the medical ward, she had come to fetch Akira for lunch. Instead, she found the Sound Hashira sprawled flat on his back in the dirt, entirely motionless, looking for all the world as if his soul had quietly departed his body.

Panic ensued.

After a frantic, chaotic flurry of emergency checks and rough shaking from the Insect Hashira, Akira’s overloaded brain finally managed to reboot. He groaned, his eyelids fluttering open. Aside from a lingering, heavy dizziness, he was physically unharmed.

Akira pushed himself up from the ground, blinking away the bleary fog clouding his vision. He looked around, suddenly realizing he was surrounded by a small crowd of very concerned faces.

“Morning,” he mumbled subconsciously, offering a weak, lopsided wave.

A collective, synchronized face-palm echoed through the courtyard.

Akira cleared his throat, the fog finally lifting from his mind. “Right. Cough. I mean… sorry for making you all worry.” With a sheepish rub of his neck, he briefly explained the details of his recent training session—or rather, his reckless flirtation with brain death.

“So, let me get this straight,” Shinobu began, her voice dangerously sweet. “You played around with your senses until you literally knocked yourself unconscious?”

Having patiently listened to his entire explanation, she looked as though she was caught between bursting into laughter and strangling him on the spot. The rest of the girls exchanged highly peculiar, exasperated glances.

It was becoming a pattern. First, he had gone off to train with Gyomei, returning so battered and bruised that Shinobu had to rush over in a panic to patch him up. Then, another sparring session with the Stone Hashira had left him bedridden for three days. And now, he had managed to invent an entirely new, completely self-inflicted method of putting himself into a coma.

“Uh… I wouldn’t exactly use the word ‘played,’ but…” Akira trailed off, his gaze wandering to the wooden floorboards. He lowered his head, suddenly finding the grain of the wood fascinating, entirely unwilling to meet the intense stares of the women surrounding him. “…Well, yes. That’s roughly the gist of it.”

Makomo and Shinobu were glaring at him, their eyes burning with a potent mixture of deep anxiety and simmering irritation. Kanae, standing beside them, simply looked deeply worried, her gentle brow furrowed in distress.

Mitsuri’s reaction was a bit different. Woven through her obvious concern was a sparkling thread of pure admiration. After all, Akira had just casually mastered the legendary Transparent World, which sounded incredibly cool and romantic to the Love Hashira.

Kanao, meanwhile, simply knelt by his side, staring unblinkingly at his face. Within the quiet depths of her pink-purple eyes, any trace of anger was entirely swallowed by a raw, undisguised attachment.

Off to the side, Sawa and Hanako Takemoto had already begun to quietly slip away, satisfied now that Akira was awake and breathing. Sawa’s jaw was tight; he clearly wanted to march over and scold the young man for being so reckless with his health and causing the girls such grief. But before the older man could utter a single reprimand, Hanako firmly linked arms with him and pulled him toward the kitchen. As she left, she tactfully ushered along Aoi, who had been hovering nervously on the periphery, looking as though she wanted to check on Akira but couldn’t find the courage to step forward.

“If it’s not ‘playing,’then what exactly do you call it?” Shinobu fired back, stepping into his personal space. “You unlock this’Transparent World’ technique, and immediately act like a toddler who just found a shiny new toy! You have absolutely zero sense of restraint!”

She crossed her arms, a dark, mocking smile blooming on her lips. “Oh, but wait. Why would our great and mighty Sound Hashira ever need restraint? For us fragile mortals, our bodies are made of mere flesh and blood, so naturally, we have to be careful. But you? You’re completely different. Your body is clearly forged from indestructible iron, free to be squandered and abused however you please! Please, forgive my ignorance. It was incredibly presumptuous of me to judge our Lord Hashira from the perspective of a lowly mortal.”

Akira swallowed hard. The aura radiating from the Insect Hashira was turning visibly dark, her smile promising immense, agonizing pain if he let her continue.

“Cough! Well, look at the time…” Akira bolted upright, clapping his hands together with forced enthusiasm. “It’s time for lunch, isn’t it? Let’s go! Everyone must be starving. Food first, scolding later. Let’s eat!”

Without waiting for a response, he spun on his heel and beat a hasty retreat toward the dining room, desperate to escape the firing squad.

“Sigh…”

Left behind in the courtyard, the girls exchanged exasperated glances. The collective, helpless sigh that followed seemed to carry the weight of the entire world. Shaking their heads, they gathered their skirts and trailed after their incredibly powerful, incredibly foolish man.

Things had come to this. They might as well eat first.