Chapter 85 Complications

Using the maps, I got during the trip to the mansion I was able to fly basically straight west towards Kyoto from where the Demon Slayer's headquarters were, and it was my first time flying such a long distance and over such a long period of time which other than my fight with Alfia, when I landed outside Kyoto, I was pretty close to mind down so I decided to simply get a room for the night.

"Well after Kyoto is cleared out, I now at least know where the Yoshiwara district is in Tokyo, so finding Daki and Gyutaro won't be much of a problem honestly." I murmured as I settled into bed and was deep in thought as too what was going on back in Danmachi and whether Bell brought some shenanigans down on Orario when I left and if I was right about the timeline about Danmachi I still had three months approximately until Artemis will show up so that will leave me with this whole trip here in Demon Slayer, some grinding in the dungeon and killing a boss or two and then another world where I will get the tools to free her from Antares.

"Yup sounds like a plan." I muttered and soon enough my mind emptied, and I fell asleep to the afternoon city noises which brought back a sense of nostalgia for my past life as the church in Danmachi didnt really get any traffic especially when its well known to be warded and we don't accept visitors.

Before I went into the room, I had paid off one of the employees to wake up close to One AM that way I would have plenty of time to hunt for demons.

-

After waking up and walking around the poorer sections of Kyoto for a couple hours I could only wonder and think on where I could find a demon in general. "If I was a monster who preyed on human flesh and couldn't be out in the sun where would I be..." I muttered before it struck me. "The sewers and the morgues!" I yelled and took off to hunt down information on any sewers or mines in the surrounding area which would be the perfect hiding place for demons.

As for why the demons would go for morgues. Well, it was pretty common sense with it being a city and, in such a place, violent murders always happen every day so if the bodies that were supposed to be cremated were missing a few limbs when they got thrown into the furnace. Well, honestly no one would care really.

After spending a bit more silver I got a set of maps depicting the Kyoto sewer system as well as the mines in the general area though funny enough I was literally warned by the bartender that kids and mineral prospectors who looked into those mines tended to disappear, so I knew I had a likely target for finding my first demon to kill.

Honestly, I much rather spend the leg work bouncing between mines rather than almost certainly getting ambushed after wandering in the rancid smelling sewers, so I swiftly flew out of Kyoto and had to check five mines before I found blood splatters marking it as demon territory. And just for my own amusement with each mine, I checked I made sure to collapse it in the hopes that some idiot demon would see the collapsed mine and be too lazy to try and dig it out and in trying to find a non-collapsed mine it would be burned to death by the sun.

"Ooohhh fresh meat to rend!" A voice husky hissed and then a lighter more human voice spoke excitedly. "Yes, and his bones look perfect to boil and make soup!"

I could only grimace deeply as the duo of demon's walked out and I steeled myself for the coming battle and not in the manner that this was going to be a difficult battle as they weren't a lower moon or anything. No, it was clearly a mother and daughter duo who was freshly turned into demons with the daughter being no more than a decade in age. "Was it Muzan who turned you?" I asked tiredly as they duo stalked around me.

The daughter franticly shook her head. "No of course not. we are devoted followers of Master Douma!" Once again, my lips turned up in a snarl at the thought of that monster literally feasting upon dozens of girls of any age in his perverted use of his cult. "I see... Do you have any idea where I can find Douma?" I asked almost genially, and the mother wasn't as innocent as the child when it came to dealing with people as she was able to see my sword hanging in my hand and how furious I was.

"Nerine get away from him! Hes a demon slayer!" She yelled and then sprinted at me to buy time assumedly for her daughter to escape and it seemed she had some kind of melee-based demon art as her fingers glowed an eerily purple.

"If only life was so simple." I muttered and then with a single swing of my sword I bisected the demon mother from head to waist bypassing the whole decapitation method as the halves of her body split apart.

"You killed Mommy!" The now named Nerine screamed hysterically at me and as she likewise ran at me armed with only sharpened fingernails and seeing no glow to her hands or any other forms of a demon art I let her pass by me as I side stepped and as she whirled to attack me again, I got behind her and locked my armored arms around her neck and put her in choke hold and tightened my grip making her choke and claw at my gauntlets.

Finally, after five minutes of struggling the demon lost consciousness and I mentally thanked Ryuu for the lessons on how to knock people unconscious without having to beat them over the head with something and hoping I didnt just make their brains on the inside turn into chunky salsa with the blows.

I swiftly walked back over to the fading to ashes body of the demon mother and threw it into my space and ring and was glad that the dissolving instantly stopped which meant I was going to be able to easily take the corpses back home to fuse into the portals I wanted to make.

But my glee for my plans coming to fruition was dampened at the knowledge that with me not being willing to outright kill a child that I needed to either cure her with someone else helping or do it myself as I certainly don't have it in me to strike down a mentally ill child.

Plus, with how easily she was knocked unconsciousness she certainly hasn't eaten much if any human flesh as with her mother having a demon art it was obvious the mother was hogging any kills they may have made.

"This is a fucking mess..." I groaned as I hoisted the child over my shoulder. "Maybe Freya can just mind control this girl into a normal mindset or something and I bet Miach if he was taken into another world with his Arcanum could cure this girl of her demon hood." I thought aloud trying to figure out a fucking plan that didnt involve me crossing basically my only moral boundary since coming to Danmachi.

'Don't harm children...' I made that promise when I killed my first man back in the dungeon and Lili held me at crossbow, I thought the first little brat I would be tempted to put into the dirt would be a snot nose pickpocket or something in Orario, not an innocent child turned into a literal man-eating monster who was assuredly mindfucked into her mindset by the cult she was raised by...