Kiyosu Castle.
By the time Imagawa Yoshimoto's army of seven thousand arrived at the castle walls, the banners still flew proudly atop the ramparts. The campfires burned as usual. Silhouettes of patrolling guards paced back and forth along the battlements. Everything appeared perfectly normal.
Yoshimoto sat within her palanquin, peering through the curtain at that low, dilapidated tenshukaku. "This is it?" Her voice was tinged with disappointment.
Kiyosu Castle was indeed shabby. Its walls were mottled and crumbling at the corners. The moat was narrow. The tenshukaku stood a mere two and a half stories tall. "Surround it." Yoshimoto lowered the curtain and tapped her fan against her palm.
Nearly ten thousand troops formed a siege on three sides. The Imagawa forces were in no rush to storm the castle. Yoshimoto had learned her lesson. She would no longer place all her eggs in a single basket. Instead, she chose to besiege three sides, leaving the southern face open.
A path of retreat for the defenders. In military strategy, this was surround three, leave one open. But along that "retreat path," three hundred ashigaru and two squads of cavalry had long since lain in ambush.
The first day of the siege. Nothing. The defenders on the walls would occasionally show their heads, loosing a few arrows with listless, half-hearted effort. The ashigaru probed toward the moat, were driven back twice by scattered arrow fire. No casualties.
The second day of the siege. Still nothing. The silhouettes on the walls continued their patrols. The campfires continued to burn through the night. But Yoshimoto began to feel that something was wrong. She sat within the main command tent. Her fan spun circles in her palm. "Ashigaru captain."
"Here!"
"Those men on the walls, how many times have they rotated shifts?"
"Reporting to my lord, according to observation, every two hours."
"And their numbers?"
"…Approximately fifty each time."
Yoshimoto's fan stopped dead. Fifty men. Two full days. The patrol on the walls had consistently been only around fifty men. The intervals between shift rotations were exceedingly regular. Almost too regular. A true defending garrison wouldn't be this mechanical.
Humans weren't machines. As long as the numbers were large enough, some would be early, some late. Some would shirk, some would overwork. But the garrison of this castle, was performing. Per… forming? Wait. Performing!
Yoshimoto shot to her feet. "Storm the castle! Now! Immediately!" The order was given. The Imagawa siege engines were pushed forward. Makeshift scaling ladders were thrown across the moat. The ashigaru surged forward with battle cries.
The resistance from the walls was so faint it was almost nonexistent. A few arrows. A few stones. Not even a single pot of boiling oil. When the first wave of ashigaru clambered over the ramparts, they discovered that the entire castle was guarded by no more than fifty-odd people.
They wore clothes of varying styles. Some were visibly ill-fitting. The secret to the constant count of fifty and the ever-changing faces was simple: the same group of people changing clothes and rotating in shifts.
Even when the shōji door of the main keep at the top of Kiyosu Castle's tenshukaku was kicked open, there was only a single person seated inside.
Blue hair bound in a low bun. A deep crimson kimono under a pale blue haori. Her collar was fastened immaculately. Her features were refined and proper. Her brows carried a deep, steady calm.
Niwa Nagahide knelt at the center of the floor. A few sheets of paper were spread across her lap. A brush was still in her hand, as though she had been in the middle of writing something.
She lifted her head and looked at the Imagawa ashigaru flooding in. Her expression was utterly serene. No panic. No fear. At the corner of her lips was an exceedingly faint, almost imperceptible smile.
"Lady Yoshimoto. Welcome." She spoke. Her voice was light and airy, as though she were greeting a guest.
When Yoshimoto reached the main keep, Niwa Nagahide had already been restrained by the ashigaru and forced to kneel in the courtyard. Her hands were bound behind her back. But her spine remained ramrod straight. Kneeling there, she seemed as composed as if she were seated.
Yoshimoto walked up to her. She looked down from above. Her folding fan pointed at Nagahide's nose. "Where is Oda Nobuna?"
"Not here."
"Where is the Oda army?"
"Also gone. With her."
Niwa Nagahide's voice remained utterly serene. It even carried a measure of peace. Yoshimoto's face, however, began to turn ashen. An empty castle. The entire Kiyosu Castle, had been left with fifty people and Niwa Nagahide. Oda Nobuna had taken her entire military force, and vanished.
"Where did she go?" Yoshimoto ground out through clenched teeth.
Niwa Nagahide tilted her head, as though considering whether to answer. Then she smiled. That smile was as faint as mist upon the water's surface. "Lady Yoshimoto," she said. "Our lord bade me ask you, when you left home… did you lock the door?"
Yoshimoto's fan dropped from her hand. Pat. The fan face struck the ground, the pine-and-crane motif smeared with mud. Her face shifted from grim severity to a slowly dawning, sickly blue. Suruga. Imagawa-kan. Her nest. Seven thousand main-force soldiers. Plus thirteen thousand auxiliary and logistics troops, all brought out with her.
The rear was defended only by civil officials, servants, the old, and the weak. Because of the Kai-Sagami-Suruga Alliance, her rear had been stable. Yoshimoto had left no significant military force behind. But now, if Oda Nobuna had taken twelve hundred men by sea and circled around from the south…
"Impossible!" Yoshimoto's voice was frigid to the core. "From Owari to Suruga by sea would take at least—"
"Three days." Niwa Nagahide finished the calculation for her. "And you spent two days besieging this castle. Plus the day you marched to Kiyosu. Three days. Precisely enough."
Yoshimoto stood there. Her entire body had gone rigid. Matsudaira Motoyasu, huddled behind the crowd, her brown eyes stretched perfectly round behind her round spectacles, didn't dare utter a single sound. And at that moment, a figure walked over. Gray robes. Flowing white hair.
Shinji stood behind Yoshimoto. His crimson demon eyes gazed at Niwa Nagahide, still kneeling on the ground with unruffled composure. His expression was inscrutable. He had already sensed it. At the very instant Nagahide had spoken those words, the osore network had transmitted a signal.
From the great kappa at Shimizu Port in Suruga. The signal was brief. "Several dozen ships. Approaching from the west of Shimizu Port. Not flying Imagawa banners." He turned toward Yoshimoto.
Yoshimoto looked at his expression. She recognized that look. It was the look he always wore when he had seized hold of critical intelligence. "It truly is Suruga…" Yoshimoto's voice trembled faintly.
"Mn." Shinji nodded. "Oda Nobuna's fleet has already reached Shimizu Port."
Yoshimoto swayed on her feet. But only for an instant. The very next second, she straightened. Because Shinji's next words settled her suspended heart firmly back into her chest.
"But you don't need to worry too much." His tone was exceedingly flat. "Your headquarters may have been left unguarded..." He paused for a beat. "But don't forget. The three provinces of the Imagawa, are teeming with yōkai." Yoshimoto froze.
Then she understood. The Hyakki Yakō. Nearly a hundred yōkai under Shinji's command, scattered across the three provinces of Suruga, Musashi, and Sagami. Among them, the Shimizu Port region of Suruga was garrisoned by the great kappa of Tōno.
An Eighth Transformation commander-class yōkai. Two meters tall. Dark jade-green scales covered its entire body. The dish-like depression atop its head brimmed with deep blue yōki. This was no minor character. Not to mention the mid-tier demons and lesser yōkai stationed throughout the rest of the territory. Imagawa-kan truly had no human garrison. But that land was not lacking in yōkai.
Yoshimoto's expression shifted back to normal. Then from normal, to complicated. "What is this?"
"You could call it, I locked the door for you in advance."
"…"
Yoshimoto bent down, picked up her fan from the ground, brushed off the mud, and turned her face away. The rims of her ears were crimson. She was furious and moved in equal measure.
Furious that she, the daimyō of three provinces, had to rely on a horde of yōkai to secure her own rear, and hadn't even foreseen this herself. The same as Okehazama before… it just proved she still wasn't formidable enough. Moved, because he had thought of it for her. And had thought of it in advance.
"However..." Shinji's tone shifted. "Although the great kappa can hold the line for a time, there's a troublesome element on Oda Nobuna's side." His demon eyes narrowed faintly. "I need to go take a look." He turned and walked toward the tent's exit.
Kikyō was already waiting beneath the corridor of Kiyosu Castle's main keep. Her longbow was slung diagonally across her back. Her white uwagi and crimson hakama were crisp and clean beneath the afternoon sun.
She glanced at Shinji. No words were needed. The two of them, one ahead and one behind, strode out of the main keep. Thunder detonated beneath his feet. Reiryoku surged at her side. They launched into the air and shot toward the east, toward Suruga, at blinding speed.
Yoshimoto stood in the courtyard of the main keep, her head lifted, watching those two trails of light vanish into the horizon. One dark violet. One pure white. Intertwined. Growing further and further away. Until they merged into a single point and disappeared into the clouds.
She lowered her gaze. The folding fan was still gripped in her hand. Her fingers tightened faintly. Beside her, Niwa Nagahide still knelt on the ground, her hands bound behind her back, her spine ramrod straight. The Oda strategist lifted her head and looked at Yoshimoto's profile. She spoke softly. "Lady Yoshimoto."
"Shut up."
"As you command."
Niwa Nagahide lowered her head. That faint, almost imperceptible smile at the corner of her lips did not fade. Yet within her eyes, worry flickered, undeniable. With that Yōkai present… My Lord, you were far too reckless after all. But she hadn't stopped her before.
Niwa Nagahide herself had had no other choice. She was Nobuna's strategist. Yet even the most brilliant strategist could not create something from nothing. Desperate gamble. Burning the boats. It was as simple as that.
At the same moment. On the other side. Suruga Bay.
On the shallows ten km west of Shimizu Port, shattered planks and broken hulls were hurled against the shore by the crashing waves, only to be dragged back out by the next surge. Blood, too, followed the tide. \
Oda Nobuna crouched behind a reef. Her golden hair was soaked through and plastered to her cheeks. Her deep crimson kosode, from collar to hem, was drenched in seawater and caked with mud and sand. Her black short-haori had been torn off at some unknown point, only a single tattered sleeve still clung to her left shoulder, fully exposing the leather armor beneath.
She was gasping. Heavily. It wasn't exhaustion. The vessel of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven would never tire from exertion like this. It was fury.
Her twelve hundred soldiers had been at full strength when they departed from the southern shore of Owari. The three-day sea voyage had gone even more smoothly than anticipated. Moving by day under cover, sailing by night, hugging the coastline.
The Imagawa scouts were all deployed on land. The sea was completely clear. On the dawn of the third day, the fleet sailed into Suruga Bay. Shimizu Port lay directly before them. The harbor was utterly empty. No garrison. No patrolling ashigaru.
Oda Nobuna had let out a laugh and said, "Just as Manmi calculated." Then the water detonated. No warning. No omen. The seawater bulged upward from the very center of the fleet, forming a wall of water forty meter high, a dark, jade-like green.
Within that wall, countless deep blue vortices spun violently. Every vortex was saturated with thick, viscous yōki. The moment the water wall rose, countless fishing boats were capsized. The ashigaru aboard tumbled into the sea like dumplings, sinking with terrifying speed.
Then a fissure split open at the very center of the water wall. Two massive, jade-green hands reached out from within. Ten fingers spread wide. Each finger was thicker than a grown man's thigh. The fingertips were armored in scales. Between them, deep blue yōki seeped through. The great kappa of Tōno.
When its two-meter-tall frame strode out from the water wall, the sea itself parted to either side. The dish-like depression atop its head was filled to the brim with deep blue yōki, gleaming with a cold light in the dawn. Its entire body was covered in jade-green scales, from neck to toes. Not a single inch of bare skin was exposed.
An Eighth Transformation commander-class yōkai. The guardian of Shimizu Port and the river basins of Suruga. Shinji's appointed warden of Suruga for the Hyakki Yakō. One of the three mightiest yōkai under his command.
It did not speak. It didn't even look at the ashigaru struggling in the water. It simply raised its right hand and pushed its palm forward. The entire water wall toppled forward. Over a dozen fishing boats were shattered to splinters the instant the wall of water swept over them.
Wood fragments and human bodies were churned into the sea together. In a single wave of attack, the Oda fleet lost nearly a third of its strength.
Throughout this, Shibata Katsuie's reaction had been fast enough. The very same breath the water wall rose, she had leaped from the deck. Her great axe was planted in the shallows. The gray-iron divine-artifact power detonated a ring of light around her. It was the projected power of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven's divine artifact.
The weight and suppression born of manifested faith-power. The ring of light swept across the water's surface and did, in truth, force the great kappa back half a step. But only half a step. The great kappa glanced down at the spot on its chest where the ring had grazed.
There was a shallow white mark upon its scales. That was all. Eighth Transformation against a divine-artifact projection. In terms of hierarchy, the divine artifact, with the power of Takamagahara's gods and buddhas behind it, was naturally superior.
But in sheer magnitude, it fell far short. And the great kappa had an overwhelming advantage. It was standing in water. Water was its domain.
The second wave of attacks came even faster. The great kappa clapped its palms together. The sea beneath its feet collapsed into a colossal crater, fifty meter, in diameter. The seawater spiraled along the crater's walls, accelerating into an all-consuming maelstrom.
The remaining fishing boats began to slide uncontrollably toward the center of the vortex. Shibata Katsuie swung her axe into the edge of the maelstrom.
The divine-artifact power tore open a gash, but the vortex sealed itself shut in a single instant. There was simply too much water. The entire Suruga Bay was the great kappa's arsenal.
Maeda Toshiie stood atop the overturned hull of a boat, her short sword drawn, her face bone-white.
"Lady Katsuie! We can't hold it!" Katsuie clenched her jaw. Her amber eyes were locked dead onto that jade-green silhouette at the center of the water. She could fight. But she couldn't win. In aquatic combat, the great kappa's geographical advantage was simply too overwhelming.
Their divine-artifact power could suppress yōki, but in the water, the great kappa didn't rely on yōki output at all. What it controlled was the water itself. Physically. The divine artifact suppressed the supernatural. But water was not supernatural. Water was simply water.
Maeda Toshiie slid off the overturned hull and crashed into waist-deep seawater. Her short sword nearly flew from her grip. She struggled onto the shallows and looked back. Barely twenty intact vessels remained. Perhaps three or four hundred soldiers. Less than a third of twelve hundred. And the numbers were still dwindling.
"My lord—!" Toshiie shouted toward a cluster of reefs. Oda Nobuna straightened up from behind the rocks.
Her golden hair clung to her soaked kimono. The salt-laden seawater had flooded inside her leather armor, making her entire body feel many times heavier.
But at this moment, she had no mind to care. Her golden slit-pupils were locked dead onto the great kappa upon the sea. The fire within those eyes blazed once more. "Katsuie, fall back."
"My lord?"
"FALL BACK!"
Shibata Katsuie hesitated for a single instant. She wrenched Maeda Toshiie by the back of the collar and dragged her ashore. Then she herself flipped backward and landed upon the shallows.
Oda Nobuna stood barefoot upon the reef. The sea breeze swelled the kimono beneath her leather armor, carrying with it a bone-deep chill from the seawater.
She raised her right hand. Crimson lotus hellfire surged from her palm. But this time, it was different from that moment at Okehazama. That time, it had been hollow. Immense, terrifying pressure, yet pitifully weak in actual strength.
Shinji had cleaved her down in a single slash. Even she herself had been split in two. Had it not been for the Demon King's immortality, she would have perished on the spot.
This time, whether it was because she had been pushed to this very brink, or because the three days adrift at sea had made her realize something, the hellfire spread.
From her palm to her arm. From her arm to her shoulder. From her shoulder to her entire body. The crimson lotus flames held no heat. Yet every trace of water vapor above the sea's surface was instantly seared dry.
Within a radius of ten paces, the seawater began to boil. The deep blue yōki pooled within the great kappa's cranial dish flickered violently. It took a step backward. Pure instinct. The instinctive wariness of an Eighth Transformation yōkai toward a power of a far higher order.
Oda Nobuna's hellfire, in that single instant, reached a certain critical threshold. Though it could not last long. Though afterward, she might be so utterly drained she couldn't even walk. But at this moment, the sea's surface for twenty paces in every direction was evaporated into dry steam, exposing the reefs and silt of the seabed.
The great kappa stood upon the dried ocean floor. The droplets of water upon its jade-green scales evaporated completely. The yōki within its cranial dish churned in visible chaos. It had been stripped from the water. Deprived of the water's amplification, the great kappa's combat strength was slashed by at least forty percent.
Katsuie's eyes blazed. "NOW!" The tall, powerfully built warrior maiden lunged forward to strike. Though she was swatted aside in an instant, though her blood scattered and she was gravely wounded in that single exchange, this time… her blade left a mark upon the great kappa's body that did not immediately fade.
It was working! Shibata Katsuie flipped back to her feet, gasping violently. She had no fear of death. The warrior who would be known in later ages as Oni Shibata, the fiercest vanguard commander of the Oda, had never feared death.
The great kappa lowered its gaze. A flicker of genuine anger surfaced. But it was at this very moment, this very instant, that a resonant hum rang out from the far distance. The great kappa, about to strike with full force, froze mid-motion. Nobuna also lifted her head.
That hum came from the north. From the direction of the heartland of Suruga Province. From the peak of the tenshukaku of Imagawa-kan, the Imagawa capital.
Within the shrine hall at the highest point of the Imagawa capital, a famed blade, which had been enshrined and worshipped for months, suddenly shuddered violently. Indigo light bled through the gaps of its sheath, flooding the entire shrine hall with brilliance. Raikiri. Sōza Samonji. That demi-divine artifact.
That famed blade which belonged to Shinji. Affection thirty-one. First Talent, Divine Aura Emission, unlocked. It had sensed its master's summons. Across a distance of hundreds of kilometers, through the veins of faith that bound them, it sensed its master's command.
Go.
And so, the hum became a shriek. The indigo lightning blasted a gaping hole through the wooden ceiling of the shrine hall. The famed blade shot into the heavens, becoming a streak of indigo electricity, tearing across the sky-canopy above Suruga Province.
From Imagawa-kan to Shimizu Port, the straight-line distance was over forty kilometer. For thunder, it was but a fleeting instant. And Raikiri's speed, was faster than thunder itself.
Nobuna saw it. She lifted her head. Her golden slit-pupils reflected that indigo arc of light streaking down from the north. And she recognized it even more clearly.
That demi-divine artifact, which carried the power of faith itself, a blade that should have been meant to slay demons and exorcise evil, was not aimed at the great kappa. It was aimed at her. Because she, too, was Ma. The Demon of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.
"—!"
Nobuna launched herself bodily. Her body, utterly drained after exhausting the hellfire just moments ago, exploded with a speed it should never have possessed, driven by the pure instinct for survival. She threw herself off the reef. The indigo lightning detonated precisely where she had just been standing.
The reef shattered. Pulverized into dust. The shockwave hurled Nobuna through the air. She tumbled across the shallows, rolling three full times. The hem of her kimono was ripped half away. Her golden hair spilled across the mud. She lay sprawled in the silt. A deafening roar filled her ears.
Her vision was a blur. And then, that indigo famed blade soared up from the shattered stone, circled once, and with a resonant hum, flew southward. Toward the direction of the tenshukaku of Imagawa-kan. There, it seemed, a silhouette stood faintly upon that distant peak. Too far. Nobuna couldn't see clearly.
Shibata Katsuie charged to her side and hauled her out of the mud and silt in a single motion. "My lord!"
"I'm not dead…" Nobuna coughed up two mouthfuls of muddy water. She felt her ribs. Pain. But they were already mending. The regressive immortality of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven was at work. She lifted her head. She gazed toward the south, toward the direction of the tenshukaku.
Though the distance was immense, there was no obstruction. And with the hellfire still blazing within her eyes, this time, Oda Nobuna could finally see. She saw that gray silhouette standing atop the highest ridge of the Imagawa capital. White, flowing hair drifting in the sea wind.
His right hand caught the indigo famed blade as it flew back. His left hand still gripped that colossal pale greatsword, the one that matched the height of a man. His identity. His stance. No words were needed.
Nobuna's golden slit-pupils contracted violently. "THAT BASTARD AGAIN—!" That one… Kishin Nakai Shinji.