Amidst the dense forest, a man sprinted through the freezing air. His tattered kimono flapped wildly in the wind, and his scuffed geta pounded the snow-covered ground with the soaked cloth clung to his skin. His breath came in ragged gasps, mist rising in the cold air of the winter season, all the while his dark and unkempt hair whipped across his eyes. Reflected on his streaked dirt face was visible panic.
'Run, run, run, run, run—'
He focused on nothing but that—constantly reminding himself to keep moving. But no matter how many times he said it to himself, he knew it wouldn't matter eventually. 'That damn demon would catch up with me!'
A battered machete hung at his side, to which he looked at it with subtle frown. 'If only I had a katana instead... I would try to slash down that damn demon by now! But what did I get?! A battered machete!'
But hope was a fleeting distraction, and he could do nothing to change the reality before him.
'Damn it all!'
He clicked his tongue in frustration as he suddenly halted.
The pale winter moon barely pierced through the thick canopy, casting long, shifting shadows across the frozen ground. His eyes darted across the landscape, flitting from one towering trunk to another until they landed on a broad oak, its gnarled roots and brittle vines snaking across its weathered bark. Without another thought, he staggered toward it, leaning hard against the frozen bark in order to 'hide'.
His footprints would be covered by the rapidly falling snowstorm, though he suspected that thing probably had its senses beyond what any human could possess, making his actions little more than a desperate attempt to buy some time—even so, he did it. He scowled. 'I still have enough strength to keep running, but if I burn through it all without finding something useful by the end of it, I won't have the chance to fight back.'
'A weapon is a weapon.'
'And if this was all I had…' he gripped it tightly. 'Then I would kill that thing with it.'
Riku Nifuruji was a freshly graduated vocational high schooler, now working as a junior accountant and part-timing at a private dojo. A completely ordinary guy—if you ignored the fact that he was decent with a sword. Well, not that it had much use in the modern world.
That evening, he was walking home from his workplace when he stumbled upon a strange distortion in the air, shimmering and pulsing unnaturally.
Now, a better man, a smarter man, might have ignored it and walked away. But no, not him. He'd touched it—and then this happened.
Where was this?
Oh, just a snow-blanketed forest in the middle of a violent storm, all the while stuck inside a body that wasn't his, with no memory of how (in a logical standpoint) he got here, no knowledge of whose body he inhabited, and armed only with a battered machete, a fraying kimono, and a head swirling with questions.
He didn't know shit about what was happening, so naturally, he tried to figure out some shits. And what did he find? Jack shit, of course.
Riku gritted his teeth. 'I was wandering through this forest hoping to find something to protect me from freezing to death. Or some clue about where I am. Or—hell, maybe that air distortion I touched before I got thrown into this world—or whatever this is. But—'
Fortunately, he found it soon enough—a house, though damaged, parts of it are still intact enough to offer shelter from the storm.
Unfortunately, there was a demon in front of the house.
Not a demon in any abstract sense, of course. It was the real one.
Pale skin stretched tight over an emaciated frame. Tall, grotesque, with limbs too long for comfort and a grin carved into its face that revealed rows of bloodstained teeth. It had been feasting, grotesquely tearing into what remained of a female corpse. A fresh one at that. So, what did he do? 'Ran, obviously.'
At first, he tried to stay quiet, stepping back as discreetly as possible. But the moment he heard the demon shriek—he bolted.
'It hadn't even been five minutes...!'
He clicked his tongue, looking at his machete again before recalling something funny. 'This kind of reminds me of the Demon Slayer's prologue...'
In the anime, the main character fought a Demon Slayer instead—a human—and failed. It's to protect his sister who had turned into a demon.
The idea of being in the Demon Slayer world crossed his mind, and he didn't try to push it away. It was a possibility, and as unlikely as it sounded, it could still be his ticket to survival.
He snorted. 'If I really am in the Demon Slayer world, though, I won't be able to do the same to the demon by pleading. The only helpful knowledge at the moment is the fact that I have to decapitate it to kill it and only a certain weapon worked to even do that.'
But with this petty machete? It had an odd color, midnight blue, but he had no knowledge on how to identify a Nichirin other than their color-changing traits, or even the exact materials to make one in it. He knew where to get the materials, though.
If he tried to kill the demon with this machete and it was deflected, he'd be dead—no ifs, ands, or buts. If the demon truly 'was' from the Demon Slayer world.
He suddenly laughed, not out of desperation, but out of the silliness of the situation. 'If I die, then so be it.'
He just wouldn't die without a fight.
Thrown into some unknown, hostile place with no clue about the terrain, no clear path, and a man-eating monster on his tail made him feel like cannon fodder—and he wasn't about to accept that. 'Hell, who would?'
He took a deep breath, sharpening all his senses and straining his ears in particular to gauge how far away the demon was now. He quickly narrowed his eyes. 'That's very close.'
The sounds hadn't been getting closer while he was running, oddly, it was actually the opposite, but he assumed that was due to him being high on adrenaline.
It was for his own safety to not exaggerate his advantage. Since he stopped running now, they were getting alarmingly closer. The creature's movements were overly energetic and unnecessarily loud, making its location and proximity easy to pinpoint.
He tightened the grip on his machete even more, forcing a grim smile to show on his face.
'Let's decide who's the predator and who's the prey here.'
***
A/N: Hello, readers.
Please rate it from 1 to 10, with the reasoning as well, if possible. That'll help me covering what's lacking from the story, or some things to be changed, name them all. I'll take it all into considerations.
Advance chapters on my Patreon, and this is for a complementary illustration that I'll try to give each chapters.