He glanced around, looking for anything he could use to his advantage against the demon besides his machete. What he found were rocks, logs, branches, leaves, and other miscellaneous debris—none of it particularly promising. Either way, he still grabbed a handful of rocks before stuffing them into his pockets, picked up the nearest log, a branch, a few leaves, and ignored the rest.
The first thing he needed to do now... was wound himself. His lips twitched. 'Let's hope this works—if not, well, there are other options.'
He intended to give everything he had, but with the pitiful supplies he had, that wasn't going to be much.
He brought the machete to one of his fingers and made a shallow but deliberate cut. Blood quickly seeped out of the wound, and he smeared it over the branch he'd picked up. In his mind, blood-related things would attract something like a man-eating demon entity. Or at least, distract him with its vision or noise.
Considering the demon hadn't bothered hiding its shrieks and lousy movements, it gave him the impression that the creature wasn't particularly bright—now was the time to test just how much of an idiot it really was.
He waited, waited, and waited. He held his breath while he did. With the pace the demon is currently adopting, it won't be long before it arrives. And when "it" was close enough—
Reed hurled the blood-smeared branch.
*Whoosh!*
—and it worked brilliantly.
'Hah! Stupid demon!'
The demon lunged toward the branch with high speed. Riku didn't rush after it. Instead, he flung a log he'd stashed nearby at the creature before darting quickly from tree to tree while keeping his eyes fixed on its every move.
The demon's bloodshot eyes narrowed after identifying the branch, realizing that he was being baited. He looked around quickly. 'Where is he...?!'
He had tried to catch this sneaky human after watching his figure from afar while he was busy feasting on an adult female he had just killed. To his frustration, however, the human was surprisingly fast—fast enough to make keeping up difficult even for a demon.
"—!"
He suddenly spotted a flying log. Acting on instinct, he went to deflect it and—
'No, it's also a bait...!'
The demon spun around just in time to lock eyes with his prey, widening his eyes. 'Since when did he—?'
The man's hauntingly intense gaze bore into him with a machete gripped tightly in his hand.
Normally, he would just have to block the clearly battered machete and kill him right after that, but he noticed something on the sheen of the blade, which made him panickedly took a step back. '—Nichirin…!'
Riku barely kept himself from stumbling forward with the momentum, clicking his tongue in annoyance afterwards.
He quickly steadied himself, burying his confusion behind a mask of focus. 'This body... it's way tougher than I expected.'
When he ran just moments ago, Riku had realized how quickly he was moving, despite not using all his strength. He'd been running at moderate pace—and he was going at a speed that was two, maybe three—no, five times faster than his original body could run by unleashing all he could. He shuddered slightly. 'It's almost 'too much.'
There was also the fact that he seemed to subconsciously do a strange exhalation before making a move.
The demon's wary eyes fixed on the blade. "You… Are you a Demon Slayer?"
Even with its rough quality, the machete unmistakably seemed to be forged of the same material as those famed Nichirin blades wielded by Demon Slayers.
'A Demon Slayer?' Riku nearly frowned. "Why do you think that?"
The demon scoffed. "Do you think I'm an idiot? That shitty machete you're holding clearly has the same material as Nichirin blades!"
'...He's an idiot,' Riku didn't need further confirmation.
From his words, it was clear: Riku was indeed in the world of Demon Slayer. There was no such thing as "Nichirin" back in his original world.
That being said, Riku didn't feel much about the revelation. 'That works in my favor—and that's all I needed to know now.'
He think through his next move after processing that piece of information. After only a second, he snorted. "So what if I am? You had such a terrifying look and scared because of a human with a battered machete?"
It was a cheap, clumsy provocation. He could tell that much. But if the demon was stupid enough to fall for it like the other bait, the situation would clearly shift in Riku's favor—clouded judgment was a fighter's greatest enemy!
The demon's teeth clenched audibly, grinding in barely suppressed rage.
"You're nothing but a human! Don't get cocky—!"
The demon dropped his long arms and lunged forward, propelling himself like a coiled spring set loose. However, Riku had already disappeared behind the safety of the woods by the time he dropped himself to the ground on all-fours.
*Crack!*
The sharp sound of splintering wood echoed through the forest. Riku paid it no mind as he darted between the trees rapidly.
Behind him, the demon clumsily crashed into several trees, snarling in frustration. 'This human thinks he can beat me with this?!'
Running on all fours, he quickly adapted, weaving more smoothly through the dense forest as he honed in on the faint trail of footprints. 'I'll catch him, rip him apart, and make him suffer!'
The tracks ran straight, curved slightly, and then—out of nowhere—veered sharply to the side. The demon skidded to a halt, his expression frozen in a momentary confusion.
"—hk!?"
A searing pain flared in his neck. Shocked, he turned his head to find the man standing mere steps away, the blade of his machete buried halfway into its flesh. Before the demon could retaliate, the man swiftly severed his head in a single, brutal strike.
'What did just—'
The demon's eyes spun wildly, the world tilting, before a dull thud echoing in his ear.
'W-What happened?' he thought in stunned confusion. The answer quickly came.
"You're dead."
The man's voice was cold, disinterested.
His calm gaze regarded the demon's decaying form as it started to crumble.
Hearing and looking at his expression, the demon's fury surged back, "That's impossible! I—"
His words got cut, causing him to frown.
His throat—his mouth—disappeared. He couldn't feel anything below his neck.
Well, of course, he couldn't. His entire body was quickly turning to ash. And before any coherent thought could form, the demon crumbled into dust, leaving only some of his scattered bloods.
***
A/N: 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.