Aging's World

As Yoru lines up a second shot, the Aging Devil disarms her first by simply jabbing a finger at her and saying the word bang, the shock plunging her into darkness. Asa surfaces in her place and slips back into the recurring chicken dream, but the moment she questions when she nodded off, the scene shifts to a wide forest. Wandering through it, she trips across Denji lying knocked out. Yoru lunges to finish him, only to discover her devil abilities refuse to work in this space.

A near-naked man interrupts the pair and reveals that the woodland is a world fashioned by the Aging Devil. He was once a celebrated hunter who, catching his reflection one day, bargained with the devil because he would have surrendered anything to halt his own aging. When Asa presses him about a way out, he confesses he has none. His count of the years he has spent here, eighty-two, leaves her stunned, more so when he adds that he is the freshest arrival.

He goes on to describe a place without hunger or thirst, where even death by one's own hand fails to grant release. Lingering too long, he warns, breaks the mind, and the others have already lost themselves further into the trees. Asked whether escape has ever happened, he begins to say yes before his own sanity buckles. Mistaking Asa for a woman named Ritsuko, he clutches at a trunk and breaks into a howl.

The Aging Devil neutralizes Yoru without firing a shot, sending Asa back into control. Asa and Yoru find Denji unconscious inside the forest realm and learn their devil powers are inert there. A long-trapped Devil Hunter explains the rules of the prison: no exit, no hunger, no death, and eventual madness. He confirms one person once escaped before his own mind collapses mid-sentence.

The chapter, titled Aging's World, belongs to the Aging Devil arc and appears in Volume 20. The trapped hunter's bargain ties his fate directly to a contract with the Aging Devil. His final words name a woman called Ritsuko, a detail that shifts in the following chapter.