CHAPTER 103: CHAPTER 103: TRANSFORMATION

Gale and rain, a sun like thunder!

White mist billowed from Sosuke’s mouth as his hands moved in a blur, a relentless barrage of hammer strikes raining down, shaking the ground like thunder.

Deep beneath the cellar, Tengen, in the midst of a crucial life matter, was already pale from extreme exhaustion. Now, his face turned even more deathly white as he felt the earth tremble above him.

"Is he really trying to give me a flamboyant burial?" he thought, staring at the violently shaking ceiling.

In this critical moment, he had to save himself. But his stomach was in no condition to cooperate. Just as he tried to gather himself and stand, another agonizing groan escaped him.

Staying here meant risking the cellar collapsing and being buried in such an unglamorous place. But going up might mean losing control, which would be even more unglamorous.

"What am I supposed to do?"

The Sound Pillar felt he was facing the greatest crisis of his life!

Sosuke, of course, had no idea about any of this. He wasn’t Tanjiro, whose nose could sniff out trouble below. He simply assumed Tengen had discovered something and been lured away.

At that moment, the only thought in his mind was to give his opponent no chance whatsoever.

If an attack landed, he had to follow up with relentless strikes. As the saying goes, "Chase the wind and never relent." His breathing flowed seamlessly, fueling a relentless torrent of Gale Sun attacks, unbroken and unyielding.

The Demon was initially stunned by the head blow, but as the Gale Sun assault intensified, she desperately parried Sosuke’s attacks with her blade.

Yet under the relentless barrage of Gale Sun, her weapon couldn’t withstand the onslaught for long.

’No matter how cunning your tactics, brute force will always prevail!’

This merciless, overwhelming assault drove the Demon into a frenzy of rage.

"Not beautiful at all!!!!" she roared.

In her fury, fangs erupted from her mouth, but in that instant, her weapon shattered, and the hammer’s shadow crashed down on her body.

Her body convulsed violently, flesh collapsing under the relentless blows. Even her recently restored head, which had barely recovered, was once again deformed.

Amidst the disheveled strands of her hair, she suddenly roared, her bones elongating with a sickening crack. Jagged white bones erupted from her elbow joints, anchoring her to the ground as her feet lashed out in a desperate, sweeping kick against the relentless assault.

In an instant, Sosuke felt a chill in his chest and abdomen.

Before he could assess the situation, a fissure suddenly appeared on the ground, as if carved by a razor-sharp blade, racing directly toward him.

Sosuke swiftly dodged to the side, causing the Gale Sun technique to abruptly halt.

The fissure, which had sliced across the ground, instantly reached a tree trunk, splitting it in two without a sound.

Turning back, Sosuke saw the Demon had transformed into an utterly bizarre form.

She lay on her back, her once-splendid robes now shredded, revealing a tight-fitting, short-sleeved outfit beneath.

The bones protruding from her elbows had morphed into blades, anchoring her to the ground.

Her legs were no longer capable of standing. Instead, the bones of her feet had burst through her flesh, transforming into a pair of chillingly white, sword-like blades.

’Enormous!’

She tilted her head back, gazing at the sky, and hissed, "Ugly! Ugly!"

Her hair hung down her back, revealing silver-white eyes. In her left eye, two characters were imprinted: "Lower Third."

Sosuke stared in stunned silence.

’Who’s ugly?’

’You, who’ve transformed into this monster without a word, what right do you have to call others ugly?’

The moment this thought crossed his mind, the Demon’s feet suddenly moved.

A palpable sense of danger filled the air, each breath feeling slightly painful. In the next instant, Sosuke leaped into the air, his white blade flashing past. He immediately looked up.

Like a heavenly blade descending!

The white blade plummeted from the sky, as if to cleave Sosuke in two.

Suspended in mid-air, he had almost no room to dodge. Attempting to block with his weapon would inevitably knock him to the ground. Once he lost his balance, the Demon would give him no chance to recover.

At this moment, he saw only two possible ways to survive this strike.

First, he could swing the Hammer-Sword, using its weight to alter his position mid-air.

However, given the trajectory and speed of the descending white blade, a collision was inevitable, even with the momentum from his swing.

"The best-case scenario is losing an arm! But losing an arm is practically losing my life!"

"Then there’s only one option left! To find life in death!!!"

Sosuke felt his mind flood with an unnatural, ice-cold clarity.

In that instant, all complex thoughts—the fear of failure, the uncertainty of the future, the anxiety about the present crisis—were purged from his consciousness.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and space stretched infinitely.

The bone-white blade descended slowly above him. Suspended in mid-air, Sosuke calmly watched its approach.

Then, he tilted his head slightly...

The ethereal sensation surging through Sosuke’s mind allowed him to instantly perceive the fleeting thread of weakness within the overwhelming attack.

The Hammer-Sword stirred slightly, then swung into motion.

Space and time snapped back into place. In the instant the rapidly descending blade collided with the gently swung hammer,

Clang!

A crisp, ringing sound echoed through the air, its clear afterimage lingering.

The next moment, half of the white blade shattered, spinning wildly through the air with a whistling shriek before plunging into the ground with a resounding thud.

Sosuke snapped out of his trance-like state. As his feet touched the ground, his leg buckled, nearly sending him to his knees.

His heart felt as if it were being crushed in an invisible fist, the immense pressure causing the veins on his forehead to throb violently.

But this was no reason to stop!

He sprang to his feet. The Demon seemed stunned by the sudden movement, staring blankly at the broken blade on the ground.

"So beautiful! So beautiful!"

A frenzied voice erupted from her mouth. "This humble servant will never allow such exquisite swordsmanship to be wielded by a foolish creature! It belongs to the Great One alone!"

In her madness, she suddenly began rolling wildly on the ground.

Normally, rolling on the ground is a childish tantrum.

But when this Demon threw a tantrum, it was terrifying.

The blades bristling across her body began slashing wildly in all directions as she rolled.

The surrounding trees were instantly cleaved in two, and a corner of the house was sliced clean off.

Sosuke found himself trapped in a storm of blades, unable to get close. He could only dodge backward, realizing that if this continued, Jigoro’s house would be destroyed. And the real problem was: were they still inside?

Recalling the misty world he had previously been trapped in, Sosuke strongly suspected they were still inside the house, merely having fallen into another inescapable trap.

"I can’t let her destroy the house," he thought.

With that, Sosuke immediately shouted, "Hey, you Breath of the Moon amateur! Your swordsmanship is utterly hideous!"