Prologue: Oblivious Fifteen Years

When Inosuke learned to speak, he had already been around boars most of his life.

He felt that fellow humans were vulnerable, or at least these two were.

One had some eye-catching breath-holding and air circulation techniques, though, that Inosuke considered imitating.

"Hey, you! Return those immediately! Those swords are precious to us!"

"Do you even understand what they're made of?! We had to take on the terrible demon slayer exam just to get a whiff of those!"

One of the two young men cried out as he lay on the grass, weak and bruised. He sputtered in a clammy tone, catching what was left of his shaky breath as a result of the battle rhythm being too fast for him.

If Inosuke hadn't been a genius, he would have been unable to comprehend what this exhausted young man wearing a dull-colored jacket with a cupped collar was saying.

It had only taken him a few months eavesdropping on villagers down the mountain to pick up on human words.

As much as he enjoyed his life with the boars who raised him, it was ultimately monotonous.

When Inosuke realized he was adopted and human, he felt sad. His parents told him to try to be human because that was his fate. He couldn't agree more, despite his shame at wanting to leave the family.

Wearing his trademark boar mask, made from the head of a boar uncle who died, he responded loudly and proudly to the young man who spoke to him.

"Why should I care? Defeated people do not have the right to complain about their possessions being taken as prizes! This is mine now!"

"Wait! Those aren't toys anyone can play with!" Inosuke was about to leave and hit the road when the taller of the two yelled with concern and urgency.

His facial expressions were still painful.

Inosuke paused in his steps. He turned to look at the stranger and asked, "Do those swords belong to great people?"

"Of course. Have you never heard about demon slayers?" the guy stated, nodding.

"Demon slayers? No. What about them?" Inosuke questioned, puzzled but intrigued.

...….

Minutes later, after bearing witness to the weakling's clarifying words, Inosuke smiled with exuberance.

He was excited.

Immediately making the decision to take the exam to become one of those "demon slayers", he did an act that upset the two guys he had brutally pummeled.

He took a chunk of stone from the ground and used it to chip and gash the two swords he had taken as a prize and now owned.

Both swords had now been sharpened into dual jagged edged swords, ready for him to slash and violently tear the flesh of prey.

Having learned about the existence of demons, Inosuke was eager for night to fall.

He was proud of his newest creations.

"Holy fuck!"

"How could you do such a disrespectful thing?!"

The two young demon slayers' eyes were wide with incredulity and enmity.

They were taken aback by Inosuke's unexpected behavior.

They couldn't look more disbelieving and dumbfounded.

Inosuke was soon told why.

Apparently, the ore from which these things were made was valuable - but that wasn't Inosuke's concern; it was these guys'. Inosuke only wanted comfortable weapons to wield.

He had gotten the things for free anyway.

"Can I also be one of those demon slayers?" Inosuke suddenly expressed his most pressing concern.

One of the guys looked at him with doubt and asked, "Are you even human? We don't recruit demons, you know… There's never been such a precedent as far as I know."

As soon as he spoke the strange words, the other one looked at him as if he were staring at an idiot, and said, "Of course he's a human, Otsubo; with that strength, if he was a demon, why wouldn't he know what demon slayers are? He probably would have eaten a bunch of us already and gotten a taste for human flesh… Do you think he would be having a nice chat with us here, asking about obvious things for demons?"

"Huh? Oh, right... Now that you mention it, he hasn't tried to eat us or cause us serious injuries." the one seemingly called Otsubo came to the realization and raised his eyebrows.

As the two started chuckling through their minor bruises and traumas, the atmosphere seemed to improve.

Inosuke did not need to use his special extrasensory perception abilities to feel it become more supple.

The enmity and nervousness he felt directed at him had died down.

In the first place, the very reason he got into a fight with these two helpless idiots was because they confronted and attacked him first. They had assumed he was a demon.

They were yelling the word "demon" earlier.

Now, Inosuke knew what a demon was.

This sudden incident was most likely due to him wearing his boar mask.

'I guess I should have been gentler?'

Inosuke thought in a slightly tsundere and shy manner.

Unfortunately, the next minute, the Otsubo guy mocked Inosuke's brilliant style, asking him why he was wearing such an ugly mask on his head when he was human.

All the goodwill Inosuke had begun to feel for him melted away at that moment.

After knocking him out and getting more knowledge from the other young demon slayer, he left the mountain forest.

This time for good.

He'd already said goodbye to his boar family. They had told him to make his own out there, even though he had no idea how that would happen or how it worked.

...….

There were two reasons Inosuke wore a boar mask.

The first one was because he was proud of being a boar; and the other one was because his face was too masculine to be witnessed bare by the world.

It needed to adjust to his upper body first…

The first time Inosuke saw his face in the water, he was very shocked and stimulated.

Having lived with boars all his life at that time, he was unfamiliar with human concepts of grandeur yet, but he still felt unprecedented.

He was a wonder, a historical and cultural treasure.

A true marvel upon the world.

At the time, Inosuke almost fell to his knees to worship his own glorious face. His masculine presence made him proud to be born into this world. It had received a grace for which it could not repay.

Inosuke understood that well.

He was now ready for the world to bask and to rejoice in his splendor.

Inosuke was humming along the way, his two jagged-edged swords resting on the sides of the animal fur around his waist, feeling particularly good.

He was slowly heading to the location mentioned by the demon slayers to take the exam.

He had days to waste, so it was a good time to see if he could find and battle demons.

[Ding! Congratulations on surviving Upper Moon number 2 Doma during your first days of life and living 15 years in this world afterward!]

[Memories of your previous life on Earth are unloading...]

[Ding!]

[Success!]

[The Halo extraction system is unlocked and activated! Make sure to check the functions once you've acclimated to your memories!]

[Multiverse features are still tightly restricted. Over.]