Pride

His head severed, Kaigaku plunges through the Infinity Castle alongside an unconscious Zenitsu, raging that someone he deemed weaker created a seventh form. Yushiro appears in his vision, coldly remarking that those who only take and never give end up with nothing, and that dying alone is a pitiful fate. Yushiro then leaps to catch Zenitsu as Kaigaku crumbles to ash.

Zenitsu drifts through an afterlife of red spider lilies and sees Jigoro across the Sanzu River. He apologizes for failing to reconcile with Kaigaku and for never becoming a Hashira. As lilies pull him downward, his weeping master tells him he is proud of him. Zenitsu wakes to Yushiro tending his wounds among other slayers, including Murata, who demands to know the strange medic's rank.

Yushiro saves Zenitsu while Kaigaku disintegrates. Zenitsu shares a final moment with Jigoro in the afterlife and hears his master's pride. Yushiro, the only demon not made by Muzan and disguised on Tamayo's instruction, joins a group of Demon Slayers. Tanjiro and Giyu encounter Akaza, who lunges at Tanjiro in surprise that the boy still lives. Far below, Tamayo finds herself sealed inside a fleshy cocoon that is slowly absorbing her.

The chapter title refers both to Kaigaku's hollow vanity and to the pride Jigoro finally voices for Zenitsu. Tamayo's predicament, trapped above a bottomless shaft and pleading for rescue as the cocoon dissolves her human-conversion drug, sets up a major thread for the chapters that follow. Murata's loud panic repeatedly draws nearby demons, complicating Yushiro's efforts. This entry is part of Volume 17 in the Infinity Castle Arc.